


Then Is My Soul with Life and Love Inspired

by akathecentimetre



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: AU, Angst, Athos Whump, Constance is having none of their shit, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, WW2 AU, history what history, wizards and wands
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-04
Updated: 2014-04-06
Packaged: 2018-01-14 13:45:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1268608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akathecentimetre/pseuds/akathecentimetre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, in which the retrieval of an Auror from the beaches of Dunkirk does not go exactly to plan; the Ministry of Magic really needs to develop some faster brooms; far too much alcohol is being consumed all ‘round; and Aramis and Porthos realize that the man they’ve accidentally invited into their lives and their bed isn’t quite whole. OT3 origins AU! Rating for language. Featuring art by JakartaInn.</p><p>CH. 2: Porthos sees stars in Libya, 1941.<br/>CH. 3: Aramis hates it when his dreams come true.<br/>CH. 4: After Norway, Constance and Athos prop each other up.<br/>CH. 5: Fanmixes.<br/>CH. 6: Liaisons; or, in which there are Historicized Naughty Bits. <b>NSFW images.</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I: Main

**Author's Note:**

> Setup note: just think of the First Wizarding War as coinciding with World War II. Then turn the Musketeers into Hogwarts graduates and Aurors. Ta-da! I'm rather nervous setting this loose into the world (and it turned into a far longer piece than I was expecting); I hope you enjoy it.

*

June 22nd, 1941

_First day of Nazi invasion of Russia_

The first thing Chamberlain did after delivering his declaration of war speech into a BBC microphone on September 3rd, 1939, and perhaps the most important thing he ever did, was to walk back into his office and sign the Pact for the Non-Proliferation of Magic in Wartime. It was said he had been so tired as to not have considered that he was, in essence, trusting the good to be vigilant and the Dark to remain quiet, because he should have realized he was asking the impossible. Pilgrim Dalton, the Minister for Magic at the time, had stood smugly to attention in all of the photographs of the event in _The Daily Prophet_ , puffed up with pride at the fact that he was being entrusted with the task of keeping Muggles safe from magic, or Dark wizards away from the battlefield, or however he wanted to put it.

At any rate, it hadn’t worked. As in really, _really_ hadn’t worked, which was why Porthos was in Paris, now, smoking on top of a hill in Meudon, staring through the dusk at the remains of a bombed-out car factory on the Seine. The house where they'd been put up was a large one, concealed by magic from prying eyes so it had not been commandeered for a Vichy bigwig, its view from the top of the hill over Paris unspoilt. Shutters creaked behind him as he stood and ground out his butt in the grass - probably Athos being his usual dutiful self about blackouts and so on - and a bird startled out of a tree. But for the muddy evidence of car parts and plaster in the water below, it would be hard to believe there was a war on.

"I can hear you thinking."

It was Aramis, who had padded across the grass to stand next to him, sweating slightly beneath his grubby shirt and waistcoat. He had taken to working in the garden while they were here, finding calm in the French lines of rigid flowers and hedges.

"It's not as uncommon as y'seem to think. Me thinking, that is."

"I never said a word."

Porthos snorted out a laugh, and shook his head, still looking down at the destroyed factory. “We shouldn’t be here.”

Aramis sighed, and put a hand gently at the base of Porthos’s spine. “I know.”

“Yeah, but – “

“I _know_ , Porthos. That doesn’t mean anything we say will change his mind.”

*

Contrary to popular myth, Hogwarts had never been a place where everyone knew everyone. Of course, it wasn’t big enough that you didn’t know someone’s name, but _knowing_ someone, really knowing them, was something else entirely.

Isaac and René had therefore met, properly, in their third year – 1928 – in the middle of a brawl between the usually calm Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw Quidditch teams, when the handle of Isaac’s broom had broken René’s nose and the favor had promptly been returned with a vicious kick to the nuts. Sniping at each other in the hospital wing, hours later, had with no effort at all turned into a friendship the likes of which Isaac had never before experienced, and never expected to have again, with anyone else.

It had been a momentous year, all in all. René’s burgeoning talent for Divination had manifested itself in terrifying dreams and prophecies which only Isaac could seem to wake him up from; Isaac’s constant troublemaking in Defense Against the Dark Arts classes and ridiculous stunts on brooms meant that René’s other talent, in Potions, frequently came in handy to set broken bones and regrow missing teeth. They spent the summer together, a month in northern Spain with René’s family followed by another in cramped and foggy London with Isaac’s mum and dad, and swore on pain of death and every other horrible thing they could think of never to leave each other.

Sometime in fourth year, when they were lying out in the grounds in glorious spring sun, and René was patching up yet another scrape on Isaac’s shin, Isaac had reached down and grabbed his hand in his own, and that was that.

Well, that wasn’t _all_ there was, because being fourteen never made anything easy, but they made it through school, and it lasted (even through René growing impossibly handsome and Isaac’s subsequent raging jealousies), and when they graduated in 1933 with NEWTs and job offers from several Ministry departments in hand, it had all seemed perfect.

Except it wasn’t, because certain Bastards On High had other ideas, which was why they found themselves in an Auror re-training course together in the winter of 1939, along with dozens of other nervous-looking Hogwarts graduates young and old, and then, in the spring of 1940, they walked into their new jobs at the newly-formed War Department at the Ministry of Magic, tasked with making sure Dark wizards – and, more specifically, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named – didn’t interfere with the war the Muggles already had going on. How exactly they were supposed to do this had, as might have been expected, been left completely unexplained.

They were given new names, ostensibly to protect them against recognition by spies who may have intercepted Allied owls. Isaac liked his code name, for whatever reason. Porthos, the very word itself, felt solid, rooted, as though just saying it could hold him upright. René liked Aramis for what he called its poetic character. Porthos just laughed, and enjoyed the way it made Aramis shiver when he whispered the three syllables into his ear when they were in bed.

Professor Dumbledore, also as expected, was a constant presence in the Ministry during those days as the Nazis pushed the British and French westwards towards the Atlantic, and the most important go-between between an increasingly sidelined Dalton and the Muggle Prime Minister. The man in charge of the day-to-day missions, however, was a Frenchman, a veteran wizard who had fled to England with General de Gaulle, named Treville. Porthos and Aramis liked him well enough, or, at least, had no reason to doubt his prowess, and had submitted to his authority with pleasure and good grace.

Treville’s civilian counterpart, another wizard in De Gaulle’s confidence, was another matter. Richelieu was arrogant, a pest, continually willing to send the Aurors under Treville’s command into the most dangerous situations, the most deadly traps, all in his quest to outfox what he saw as a tidal wave of Dark influence creeping ever closer to England, and to his General. Porthos had always felt glad to have Treville between him and them, happy to let the two older wizards shout and curse at each other behind the locked doors of their offices and leave them to get on with their jobs.

They were given a tiny, cluttered office to share when they weren’t out in the field, stacked high with decades-old paperwork and dusty lamps. On their first morning, a beautiful auburn head had peeked in around their doorjamb, fine eyebrows raised.

“Hello. They finally got someone to squeeze in here? Good luck with that.”

Constance was gorgeous, sharp-tongued and just as sharp-witted, had been in Gryffindor two years below them, and ran the office according to Treville’s orders with a truly startling amount of efficiency. She had a hip flask tucked into her skirt, kitten heels, constantly-perfect red lipstick, and a possibly mythical Squib husband who had avoided the draft. And by the end of that first day, Porthos and Aramis were, like everyone, wrapped lovingly around her little finger.

In May of 1940, at the end of their first official week on the job, Treville had come into their office with a piece of paper in his hand. “Showtime, _mes garçons_ ,” he’d said. “An undercover Auror was headed for Dunkirk, and now he’s missing. You’re to retrieve him, preferably alive. We’ve no idea what sort of mess he may have gotten into, and no idea where he’s been for the past three days. You leave in an hour, by broom.”

He’d given them the piece of paper – a photo, as it turned out – and Porthos, frowning, had sat forward in his seat, handed it over to Aramis for a second look. “Hey, it’s – isn’t it?”

Porthos thought he remembered the scruffy face looking out at them, blinking slowly, and Aramis’s nod had confirmed it. Or at least, they both remembered the Gryffindor who’d been Head Boy when they were in that heady third year, the Quidditch Captain and Keeper who had so easily rebuffed their excited attempts on goal on the pitch in their first year on their respective teams, the student whose reputation for dueling was so high that he was said to be _better_ at fighting when he was upside-down under the influence of a Levitation Hex than when he was right-side up.

Sitting there in the dimly-lit office, they’d remembered him as Oliver; and they remembered his Head Girl, the Slytherin with whom he had strode around the castle, the Charms genius – Anne. The scowling, exhausted face looking up at them then, however, and the scrawled “ATHOS” beneath the photograph, bore little resemblance to the distant object of hero worship they had known.

Constance had grabbed their arms as they were on their way to the surface to take off, hissed under her breath that “You’d better bring him back alive so I can kill him myself. The bloody fool has a death-wish.”

“What sort of a death-wish?”

Constance’s eyes had flickered sideways, almost involuntarily, and Porthos caught sight of the notice board behind her, the one which had lowered his spirits a little more every day they’d been coming in and out of the Ministry – the one which had pinned up in neat little rows the unmoving photographs of those they had lost in the field since the war began. And there she had been, third from the left and two down – Anne, the Slytherin Head Girl, all bright eyes and a shining smile, a dark-haired man on either side of her.

“Tell him,” Constance had said, irritably, tapping her quill nervously on her desk, “that losing a wife and a brother is no excuse for suicide. There’s a war on. And – be careful.”

“Well,” Aramis had said after a long moment of incredibly frustrated silence, “this should be fun.”

It wasn’t.

They had hovered above the wide, teeming beaches on their brooms for a long time, watching the machine guns spray across the sand, the dozens of fishing boats and wherries from Dover, Hastings (so _many_ of them), chugging in as close to the shore as they dared, the hundreds and thousands of British soldiers churning out into the waves, carrying their wounded fellows above them on bloody stretchers. Further back from the beach, in the dunes, abandoned trucks and tanks burned. Every few moments, a mortar would fall and burst, leaving a cluster of dark little ants, bodies, sprawled around it.

Porthos had looked at Aramis, who looked as sick, and as fucking terrified, as he felt. “What the hell is our man doing down there?” he eventually yelled across the ten feet between them.

“God, I do not _want_ to know,” Aramis replied. Porthos took a deep breath, angled the handle of his broom downwards, and dived.

Porthos had always been good at Deflection Charms, so he was in charge, once they let themselves fall into the seething water a few hundred feet from the nearest evacuating ship, of casting and keeping up a spell that would keep the smaller bullets away from them as they ran. They weren’t about to underestimate Muggle weaponry, that was for sure, not when their feet were slipping in red mud and they started to blend in, in their Army uniforms, with the rag-doll bodies no one had thought to try and save yet. Planes had started to screech overhead, German ones, puffing their own bullets into the ravaged beach, and there was screaming and prayers in amongst the tremendous din, and Porthos wanted, suddenly, to run, run as fast as he _fucking_ could.

But they had a job to do, and they were going to do it if it killed him, so he had just grabbed Aramis’s arm, pulled him close, and kept going, looking for something, anything, that would tell them there was magic going on, somewhere. To be honest, he was well and truly convinced that these Muggles didn’t _need_ any magical help to augment the hell they were creating.

“There,” Aramis had panted, finally, and Porthos looked up to his right, into the dunes, to see showers of colored sparks, the unmistakable sign of a duel. They stumbled and slipped up the damp sand, sometimes on their knees, pulling at the scrubby grass to keep them upright, and, as they crested the hill –

_BANG._

A huge flash of green light had blinded them, leaving Porthos staggering and keeping himself upright on Aramis’s swaying shoulder. A great cry of rage and pain followed it, and then trailed away into a horrifying silence.

Porthos blinked and coughed, waiting as his eyes slowly cleared, his wand held out straight in front of him. “Was that an Unforgivable?” he croaked.

“Must’ve been,” Aramis said. He was shaking under Porthos’s hand as he finally took a few steps forward, then picked up speed, the two of them running again, to where two men lay unmoving in the sand.

Their legs were entangled, wands discarded in the grass, a handgun – a Luger – in between them. The Dark wizard was most definitely dead, perhaps twice over, his jaw broken and gaping, sickeningly open, up at the grey sky. Porthos turned the other man over, wiped blood out of the eyes, and nodded. “It’s him.”

Oliver – Athos – jerked under his hands, suddenly, eyes opening wide and hands flailing out in a surprisingly strong attack at Porthos’s face. Porthos grunted, grabbed the wounded wizard’s wrists and pinned them to his chest. “Woah, mate,” he had said, attempting to smile, attempting reassurance. “We’ve come to bring you home, hush.”

“No – no – ” Athos’s hands clutched at his own shirt, as if searching for something, a violent trembling sweeping through his limbs. “Where – did you see – ”

“What?” Aramis said quickly, pulling Porthos upright and then grabbing Athos’s arm, trying to make him stand. “We’ve got to get out of here, come on – ”

Athos wrenched himself out of Aramis’s grip, and looked around him wildly, his eyes scouring the sand. Porthos was not ashamed to realize that he was frightened of the man, of the way his teeth were bared against some unknown agony.

“This.” Aramis was holding something up, which he had pulled out of where it had been half-buried in the sand just behind Porthos. “Is this what you’re looking for?”

It was a locket, heavy, solid silver on a thick chain. It was swinging in Aramis’s hand, but it was open, and Porthos caught sight of a hint of yellow and blue inside before Athos snatched it out of Aramis’s fingers and slipped it over his head, both hands clutching at it desperately.

It was only then that he had looked up at them, blinked, and, swaying gently, asked, so very bleakly, “Who the hell are you two?”

He fainted before either of them could answer.

The flight back across the Channel to London, with Athos slumped against Porthos’s back and Aramis swooping in formation below and above them to watch for anyone tailing them, was long and blissfully quiet. They had gone straight to Mungo’s, gotten Athos a bed, and, waiting in the corridor as the nurses started their work on the head wound (and malnutrition and exhaustion, Porthos noted they didn’t point out), he and Aramis just sat quietly together, stunned.

“What d’you think happened?” Porthos asked eventually, bored with watching the swollen, rotting or simply bizarre parade that was the waiting room.

“I have no idea,” Aramis had answered, shaking his head. “Whatever it was, he needs help. And a lot of it.”

They were let back into the private room where Athos was resting a few hours later, to find the older Auror awake and watching them with mild curiosity in his eyes. He still looked beyond haggard, and there was something of the cornered dog about him in his face and the way he was hunched back into his bedstead, but seemed to make an effort to muster up a smile for them as they approached.

“It seems I have much to thank you for,” he said. His voice, now that he wasn’t half-mad on a godforsaken beach, bore a hint of melodious steel.

They sat at the bottom of the bed, and Porthos waved a hand dismissively. “All in day’s work?” he said, not bothering to hide the fact that he was shaken up all to hell. “I’m Porthos. He’s Aramis.”

“Indeed. I remember you,” Athos said, and laughed sharply. “The Hufflepuff Beater and the Ravenclaw Chaser. Am I right? And the trick with the sleeping potions in the breakfast porridge?”

“Right,” Aramis grinned, and Porthos echoed it. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.

A message arrived at the hospital from Treville saying they should guard Athos there until he was well enough to return to work, and so they had. It had ended up taking five days, during which they learned a lot about the man they’d risked their lives for.

They learned that he was one of the few people who could beat Porthos – occasionally – at cards. They knew he knew, or at least was picking up on, far more about them than they were about him, as his eyes followed them around the room, noted every gesture between them, every laugh and rib. They discovered he had an unexpectedly wicked sense of humor. They’d listened to the wireless together, listened to Churchill saying _Every chance brought forth a noble knight_ and _We shall fight on the beaches,_ and they were never able to wake up in time to intercept and dissuade the owl which Athos had somehow commandeered to bring him bottles of Firewhiskey each morning via the window above his bed. The bottles were always empty by nightfall.

All in all, they had learned that they were desperate to get him back to the office, to be his friends, and, Porthos realized on the third morning, make sure he never went on a mission alone again. It was a strange feeling, that sudden surge of protectiveness, which previously he had only felt for Aramis.

Very late on the last night before Athos was due to be released from the hospital, Dumbledore had visited them, silently, with no fanfare or warning of his arrival. Athos had been asleep, and so was Aramis in his lumpy chair, but Porthos had been awake, barely, to see the Headmaster stop at Athos’s bedside, touch the sleeping wizard’s hand where it was wrapped around the locket on his chest – and recoil as if he had been burned.

“Oh, my dear boy.” The sad murmur was all Porthos remembered hearing before he, too, had fallen asleep.

It had been more than a bit of a surprise to find out, when they all got back to the Ministry and set up shop again in their increasingly-cluttered little office, that Athos and Constance’s friendship was real, ran deep, and, in fact, was more of a honest-to-Satan unholy alliance which led to the fiercest round of prank wars that Porthos and Aramis had ever experienced, and that included everything they’d ever witnessed or gotten up to at Hogwarts. She was the only person who could storm into their personal space and take Athos’s bottle of Firewhiskey away without incurring a serious injury, and he was the only one who could wheedle a night off duty out of her; he covered for her, and took the punishment of having retaliatory frogspawn put in his tea, when she had tricked both Porthos and Aramis into sitting on Stinkbomb-filled cushions.

_How_ exactly their friendship had started Porthos wasn’t even sure he wanted to know, but eventually Constance had volunteered the fact that for whatever reason, she was the only person Athos had trusted to remind him that he could be sane after the night when he’d Apparated home, bloody and raving, from keeping watch on the British Navy as it had approached its landing points in Norway, and the retrieval teams sent to check out the situation had brought back only the headless body of his brother and the news that Anne had disappeared, and was presumed dead in the chaos of the mangled invasion attempt. It shocked Porthos to realize that that had happened just six weeks before they’d joined the Ministry; six weeks before they’d found Athos on the beach at Dunkirk. The war had completely crumpled his sense of the passage of time, made soldiers of all of them, demanded that Athos return immediately to the office where he had sat across from his brother, next to his wife.

“Can’t blame him, really,” Constance said once, when they were all together and tipsy at Porthos’s flat one evening, and she was rolling an unconscious Athos off the sofa onto the floor so she could sit down, wriggling her stockinged feet under a blanket. “I’d have had a drink or two after that, I can tell you.”

If he’d been a little less disgusted at what all the booze turned Athos into, Porthos would have been mightily impressed by the way their new comrade managed to be alive at all, let alone prove true the old rumor that he was even better at dueling upside-down (during their first mission to occupied France, when they’d cleared a nest of Dark wizards in Reims), given how much he drank. Athos preferred Muggle bars to anything in Diagon Alley, apparently because he had a higher tolerance for their liquors than magical ones, but, Porthos came to suspect, probably more because of the greater variety on offer. Each drink produced a slightly different type of hangover, and within three weeks, Porthos and Aramis found themselves familiar with each and every one.

“You,” Porthos had said once when they were in a bar on the Isle of Wight (‘Just for fun,’ Athos had said), in rumpled civilian clothes, crashing after another night of painful adrenaline, “are _such_ an idiot.”

“That I am,” Athos had said, and waved over the bartender. “What do you want next?”

“Tell me we’re not enabling him,” Porthos had said to Aramis, shaking his head fuzzily.

“Not sure anything we’d do would make any difference, mate,” Aramis sighed. “On the bright side, we’re getting free drinks?”

Athos had banged down another trio of glasses in front of them, clapped them both on the shoulders, and leaned in close, a crooked grin on his face. “Fortification, gentlemen,” he announced grandly. “You’ll thank me when you sleep through the nightmares.”

It was, Porthos had realized later, unfortunately true. Their many nights of non-sobriety left them few hours to get any proper sleep, and, paradoxically, that felt good. Aramis hadn’t had any of his prophesying dreams, either, for more than two months.

In July, it all really started to kick off. They traded their civilian undercover clothes for RAF uniforms (Porthos felt out of place, and also never wanted Aramis to go near anyone of either sex ever again while wearing it due to the effect it tended to have on bloody _everyone_ ; Athos never seemed to take it off, and it suited him like a second skin, posh bastard); the Ministry gave them parachutes as backup, and they went up in the air over the Channel, day and night, their pitifully outmatched brooms leaving them far behind the Spitfires and Hurricanes they were supposed to be protecting against the incoming Messerschmitts. All they could hope was that the planes weren’t actually being _flown_ by Dark wizards; when they were able to pinpoint the location of a dogfight, the most effective way to figure out what was going on was to fly far above them where the air was frigid and leaving frost in their clothes, using Omnioculars to peer down and find any hooded figures on brooms tailing the planes.

It was exhilarating, Porthos had often thought, usually with a comforting pang of guilt (but only afterwards, when they were staggering back onto firm ground). That feeling of swooping down thousands of feet, swirling up behind their adversaries, a hex sending them rapidly downwards, was priceless – far beyond anything he had experienced on a Quidditch pitch. He had felt no remorse for the men and women he sent spiraling down into the Channel; the only emotions he had allowed himself to feel was the thrill of the chase, and an ever-present wariness for Aramis and Athos.

It wasn’t all fun and games, of course. Unprepared as they were to deal with the savage force of the fighters screaming around them, there had been incidents. For the first, Porthos and Aramis had had no chance to help: the wingtip of a Messerschmitt pulverized the tail of Athos’s broom, leaving him spinning wildly, a cloud of splinters floating around him as he fell. Porthos had followed him down, but his broom was too slow; his heart was in his mouth, and next to him Aramis had been swearing a streak in his ear, until, finally, they felt the blessed relief of a parachute opening. The tiny dot that was Athos blossomed into a cushion of white silk, and he landed safely in a field, very much confusing and disturbing a herd of cows.

“You fucker,” Porthos had growled, shaking Athos hard as soon as they’d found him, lying peacefully in a haystack. “Don’t you _ever_ do that again.”

A smile had bloomed on Athos’s lips, and Porthos had hated the look of quiet nothingness in his eyes. “I promise.”

The worst Aramis had experienced, thank God, was a long-lasting _Impedimenta_ which left him frozen to his broom, slowly rising up into the clouds. It had taken Porthos and Athos two hours to guide him back to the ground, by which time the dogfights were long over and Aramis’s hands and face were blue with cold. That, thankfully, was easily remedied by a very long night, and the following morning, in Porthos’s bed, pressed back to chest, legs entangled and several down quilts making them sweat.

Night flying was, there was no other way of putting it, terrifying. It was an evening in late August, finally starting to shade into late summer darkness, when Porthos’s chance to be killed came. A hex from a Dark wizard even bigger than him hit him square in the sternum, knocking him clear off of his broom, and his flailing hands couldn’t grab it back. He fell past two Hurricanes so close he could have touched them and then past Athos, who caught him, but the force of Porthos’s weight on his arm pulled its joint straight out of his shoulder, leaving them both shouting and screaming, Athos dangling by his legs from his bucking broom and Porthos, completely disoriented, grimacing at the straining _wrongness_ of the wrenched hand and wrist he was clutching onto. Aramis swooped up underneath them, eventually, got Porthos onto his own broom, and, as the only one of the three of them who was vaguely coherent, was in charge of forcing Athos’s dislocated shoulder back into its place when they got back to the ground. They needed an hour of just lying still, their bare feet in a random country brook, before they felt able to move again.

Later that night, they’d been in a pub in the middle of nowhere, getting as drunk as they could before closing time, and Porthos and Aramis had had to drag Athos off of the proprietor, whom he had jumped over the bar to punch and be punched by, shouting _Take that back you cunt_ and _You aren’t fit to lick his boots_. At first they’d thought it was just a misunderstanding after Athos’s fifth double-Scotch, but it turned out to have been far worse.

“He said the Jamaicans should get off the airfields and go back to where they belonged,” Athos had panted, staring straight at Porthos as Aramis dabbed at his bleeding lip. “Fucking arsehole said a lot of things. Made assumptions.”

Porthos had crushed him into a hug, forgetting the bruised shoulder, his head swimming with drink and fierce love. They’d Apparated back to London, all gone to Aramis’s flat, and, without a second thought, they’d brought Athos to bed with them. It had been messy and fumbling and it would be better, much better, the next time, but even as soused as they were it was worth it, that first time, to have him sandwiched between them as they fell asleep, to reflect the next morning when they woke up on how grateful, and how momentarily content, he had looked with Porthos’s mouth on his throat and Aramis’s hand pushing apart his thighs. It had absolutely been worth it.

  
[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1271341/chapters/2626855)  
Illustration by [JakartaInn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JakartaInn/pseuds/JakartaInn). Click for full view.

*

And now, it was June again, they had been based in the quiet, looming Paris house for over six months, and Aramis was standing on the hill in Meudon, watching Porthos smoke cigarette after cigarette, and wishing things had stayed that simple.

It hadn’t been Porthos’s fault, nor Athos’s; it was no one’s fault except the war’s, the bloody fucking war that was just going on and on and now, with Russia invaded, due to be interminable – it was just the war’s fault that Porthos was getting more and more fed up with standing by until there was a blatantly magical attack and intervention was made legal by the treaty Pilgrim Dalton had signed; it was just the war’s fault that Athos’s loyalties to his country and to his commanding officers were as strong as any loyalty he bore the two of them, which meant he hadn’t, and wouldn’t, ever let Porthos go out and fight without orders. They had started to pull apart, and Aramis didn’t know what to do about it.

Though he did think, sometimes, that when it came to Athos there might have been more than the war. Since they’d arrived in Paris he had been eating less and less. He had stayed pale in the summer even as they trekked and flew across Europe in the baking sun, and slept little. Even on the nights when he joined Aramis and Porthos in their bed, fierce and determined in his physical affection for them, Aramis would often wake to see him standing at a window, staring out over Paris. It would have been less worrying if he had paced or had nightmares; that stillness, on the other hand, was something Aramis could neither understand nor approach.

He was worried. Porthos, he knew, was worried sick, as evidenced by the cigarettes. Shaking his head to clear it, Aramis leaned down and picked up the smoldering butts Porthos had let fall at his feet. “You’ll scorch the grass.”

“Oh dear,” Porthos said heavily, but the next butt he ground out he picked up himself. “What’s the time?”

“Nearly seven. We’re leaving in an hour.”

They were Apparating to Berlin, tonight, and Aramis still couldn’t quite believe the temerity of what they were about to do. Dumbledore had visited them in person a week ago, bringing the news that he and Treville believed there was a mole in the Ministry who was feeding information to Dark wizards, and possibly to the Reich. Information brought out of Germany by a no-longer-undercover Auror indicated the mole would meet with a high-ranking Dark witch this very night, and so the three of them were to go and, supposedly, catch the traitor in the act.

That was the plan, at any rate, but Aramis knew it was a fool’s errand. More to the point, it was probably a death trap, because no enemy agent worth their salt would have let that information slip without them _wanting_ it to be acted upon. Aramis and Porthos had both tried to impress this on Athos, tried to get him to argue Treville out of it, but he had just looked at them, and shaken his head, and that was it. Berlin it was. Apparently.

Athos came out to them in the garden ten minutes before eight, having locked up the house, carrying both of their wands – dragon heartstring, sixteen inches, oak, for Porthos and fourteen inches, unicorn hair, willow for Aramis – and three dark army-issue jackets. He had a feverish flush in his face, and an unblinking stare.

“You know something, about tonight,” Porthos muttered as he grudgingly took his gear from Athos’s hands. “Don’t you.”

Athos inclined his head. “Perhaps. It’s just a theory.”

“Well, are you going to tell us?”

“No,” Athos said flatly. “If I’m wrong, it won’t matter.”

“Not very reassuring, mate,” Aramis said, shaking his head.

“Sorry.” Athos’s answer was clipped and uncaring, and it made Aramis want to be sick.

“We should be in Russia, helping,” Porthos growled under his breath. “This is suicide.”

“We do what we’re told,” Athos said, shrugging his arms into his own jacket and doing up the buttons all the way to his chin.

“’M getting really tired of you saying that.”

“Take it up with the Ministry,” Athos said nastily, and held out both of his too-white, long-fingered hands. “Let’s go.”

Aramis took his left hand, squeezed it hard and viciously, trying to make it clear to him that this was worse than normal, this was _far_ worse for some reason than the usual quiet panic and raging excitement they always felt before their normal missions, and that this time, perhaps, Porthos had been pushed beyond what he could take. Athos looked at him, briefly, and just as they Apparated, Aramis saw his lip curl.

They stumbled to a stop in a dark alleyway, and immediately dropped down to the ground, letting their eyes adjust to the last lingering dusk light. They were supposed to be in the southeast of the city near the Landwher Canal, Aramis remembered from their brief, and very close to where the alleged meeting would be taking place. It was an old warehouse, one of the few buildings that had actually been hit by the sporadic raids the RAF had thrown their meager resources at, and as yet – hopefully – still deserted and un-repaired. They’d memorized the aerial photographs sent to them by the proper War Rooms, and from looking quickly around him, Aramis knew exactly where they were: just behind the building itself, in amongst rubble and trash strewn about by the British bomb.

Athos got up slowly, scanning around them, his wand gripped tightly in his hand. “Clear,” he muttered, and Aramis got up too, pulling Porthos with him.

“Too quiet,” Porthos said, still half-hunched. Aramis nodded.

Athos was walking away already, his firm step leading them straight towards the corner around which was, Aramis knew, the entrance. Aramis cursed under his breath and hurried after him, sensing Porthos’s exasperated fury next to him. “Gonna get us all killed,” Porthos snarled.

Athos paused only briefly when he was in front of the ragged iron door, to make sure Porthos and Aramis were by his side. Once they were, a blast of magic from his wand blew it right off its hinges, and slammed it, juddering, to the stone floor inside.

The sound made Aramis jump, but far worse was the fear that swept over him as the crowd of Dementors inside – there had to be at least fifty of them – turned and looked at them with their sightless, rotting heads.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Porthos blared. “Fucking ambush, I fucking _knew it –_ ”

Athos practically _leapt_ forward, and Aramis, as though attached to him by some invisible string, rushed into the first cavernous, blackened room right next to him. Athos stopped, set his shoulders, and lifted his wand towards the first Dementor, which, eager and hissing, was swooping towards them.

“Go!” Athos shouted, wisps of white starting to form around his hands, his breath puffing out into the suddenly freezing air. “Get into the other rooms, find the mole, they’ll know we’re here by now – ”

“We are _not_ letting you deal with this alone,” Aramis screamed back. He was begging, he could feel it, and he also knew what the answer would be.

“I can hold them off, just _trust me –_ ”

“Like hell!”

“ _Go_ ,” Athos roared again, and as his Patronus burst out of the end of his wand – a falcon, quick in flight and wings and talons outstretched – and hurtled towards the Dementors, Aramis turned and ran, tugging a growling Porthos along with him, pushing through several sets of doors, willing himself to block out any sounds from behind them.

“Stop,” Porthos snarled, though he was jogging next to Aramis nonetheless. “We have to go back, there are too many of them – ”

“We get the mole first,” Aramis snapped, picking up his pace as he swept the illuminated end of his wand from side to side, checking each room as they hurtled through them.

“Damn it,” Porthos breathed, and burst ahead of Aramis, slamming open the final door.

They were greeted by the crack of an Apparition as they skidded to a halt. They were too late. There was only one person in the room, and it wasn’t anyone from the London office. The mole had gone. The witch, though, the enemy agent, heard them barrel in, and turned towards them, wand outstretched and threatening.

Aramis found himself unable to move. “My god,” he whispered.

Anne was as beautiful as ever. More beautiful, if anything, than they had last seen her, in the photograph on Constance’s wall, with Athos’s arm around her waist.

“You’re not who I was expecting,” she said, calm and deadly.

“Neither are you,” Porthos forced out.

She smiled, and Aramis tried to think of a spell, something to stop her imminent disappearance, but his mind was empty.

“Well, do tell him I said hello,” she purred. “ _Auf wiedersehen_.”

Porthos hurled himself forward, but he wasn’t fast enough – Anne had Apparated, and was gone.

Porthos whirled around to face Aramis, eyes wide. “What the _actual fuck_ – ”

Aramis shook his head, and started to run back. The building was quiet, he realized – far too quiet. “Athos!”

Porthos was alongside him, shouting at the top of his lungs – they were barely even forming real words anymore, it was just a building storm of rage and worry – and when they slammed back through the derelict doors into the first room, it was to the sight of several Dementors bending over Athos, who lay splayed out and boneless, his wand broken in pieces across the dusty floor and spilling burning fragments of phoenix feather, eyes wide open and staring at nothing.

Aramis was glad that Porthos still had enough control over himself to cast a Patronus, weak as it was, because he was too numb to think of anything happy enough for the spell to work. The Dementors retreated quickly, apparently knowing their appointed work was done, and spiraled out of the broken windows and the collapsed roof, disappearing into the dark.

They shook Athos; they tried every spell they knew. Aramis dug through his pockets, forced potions down his throat, even small amounts of the poisons to try and elicit a reaction, but there was nothing left. Athos’s chest rose and fell, but his face did not change its blank expression, nor would his limbs cooperate when they tried to lift him onto his feet, tried with desperate platitudes in his ears to convince him that he could get up and walk.

An hour later, Aramis was utterly spent, leaning into Porthos’s side, unable to look at Athos for another second. “We should get him to Mungo’s,” he eventually managed to make himself say.

Porthos shook his head against Aramis’s shoulder. “No. Not tonight.” The big wizard took a deep breath. “Not yet.”

They Apparated back to the Paris house, which seemed to be leeching cold out of its stones into the air, and laid Athos down on one side of the rumpled bed. Porthos, apparently no longer to bear it, reached out and brushed his eyelids closed, so he truly resembled a corpse. A breathing, ‘living,’ corpse. Aramis shivered as they got undressed and slipped under the covers, leaving a good foot between them and the empty flesh which had been their friend.

“What do we do now?” Porthos rumbled against Aramis’s chest.

Aramis had no answer.

He fell asleep, fitfully, and, for the first time in a long time, dreamt, with a clarity he hadn’t felt since his first heady days of studying Divination at Hogwarts. A dragon in full flight dived downwards into darkness, quick as a Spitfire, chasing something: a phoenix, its wings broken, ragged bones pointed upwards as it fell.

He was woken, much later, when sunlight was starting to creep through the shutters, by Porthos shaking him, hard, panic writ large across his face. “Where is he?”

“What?” Aramis yawned, and reached sideways – to find nothing but an empty bed. “ _What –_ ”

They scrambled upright, pulling on trousers and unbuttoned shirts, and stumbled down the stairs. There was a light on in the kitchen, and –

Athos was standing at the sink, washing out a glass, a bottle of Armagnac at his elbow. As Aramis and Porthos stared at him from the doorway, shocked into silence, he turned and looked at them, wiping his hands clean on a dishcloth. “Morning,” he said, voice low and even. “I’m guessing we didn’t get her, then?”

“Oh, _shit_ ,” Porthos breathed.

Aramis didn’t feel himself moving, but somehow, five seconds later, they were all on the floor, Porthos pinioning Athos hard to the freezing flagstones, and Aramis’s wand was pointed at his face.

“ _Right_ ,” Aramis ground out, his hands shaking hard. “Talk. Who’s in there?”

“It’s me.”

“No, it _isn’t_ , because you were alone with a whole _pack_ of fucking Dementors and you should not be _alive_ let alone walking and talking – ”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Athos said, and made his first – unsuccessful – attempt to wrestle free. Porthos growled, slammed his wrists back down into the ground, and added the pressure of his knees into Athos’s thighs for good measure. Athos let his head fall back, and his eyes squeezed closed. “Please, don’t – ”

“Give over,” Porthos snarled, every muscle taught and full of force. “Your soul should be in _shreds_ , it should be _gone_ , who’s to say _you’re_ not the fucking mole – ”

“ _There was no soul for them to take._ ”

The admission froze them both into unbelieving, icy quiet. Athos let out a long breath and opened his eyes again, looking up at them with the calm of a martyr, and something in Aramis’s chest seized.

“Dumbledore has believed for some time now that Voldemort must have used some of the Darkest magic there is to keep himself alive,” Athos said, slowly. He seemed to be gradually relaxing under Porthos’ iron grip, as though in relief. “They’re called Horcruxes. The act of killing, in conjunction with the spell, stores a piece of the soul in an object, and the soul cannot be fully destroyed unless the Horcruxes are, too.”

“Dunkirk,” Aramis whispered.

Athos nodded, staring up past Porthos at the ceiling. “Dumbledore asked me to research it, after – Anne. He thought he was doing me a favor, keeping me busy.” He laughed, then, a horrible, wracking sound. “I decided to get him some firm proof that the thing could be real. It was too strong a temptation. The promise of not feeling.”

“ _Shit,_ ” Porthos said again, viciously, and hurled himself upright. He turned on his heel and stormed out of the room, out towards the garden, doors and shutters banging in his wake.

Aramis swallowed, and put a hand over his eyes, blocking out the sight of the ever-present silver locket rising and falling on Athos’s chest between the folds of his shirt. “So, the Dementors couldn’t – ”

“Mm. Even they didn’t want what was left.”

Aramis got up, his wand still in his limp hand, and staggered after Porthos, leaving Athos lying still as a statue on the kitchen floor. The weak morning sunlight in the garden was turning the untamed grass golden.

They sat down at the bottom of the garden together, their skin warming as the day did, in silence. Around noon, two soft pops echoed behind them, and they turned, reluctantly, to see Treville and Dumbledore watching them carefully.

“You,” Porthos snarled, almost under his breath. “You knew.”

“Alas,” Dumbledore said quietly. “I did. I wish I had realized it in time to stop him.”

Aramis looked hard at Treville. “You, too.”

“Yes, of course. I could hardly ignore the fact that we had a – technically – immortal asset on our side. I hoped to use him for as long as he could bear it.”

“You – ”

Aramis threw out a hand to stop Porthos from barreling upright and most certainly killing their commander. As much as he would’ve loved to see it happen, it probably wasn’t their best idea ever. “You know who the mole is,” he said. “You know who it _must_ be.”

Treville sighed, and put one hand on his hip, looking distractedly out at the view down the hill towards the Seine. “I know,” he replied. “I know it has to be Richelieu. But that doesn’t make it any simpler, because he’s the sort of man who doesn’t necessarily care which side he’s on. He could be doing his greatest damage now, or he could be waiting for something bigger. For all I know, he could be running a double-scheme and actually working for us after all.”

He looked back at Porthos and Aramis, Dumbledore quiet at his elbow. “I need proof. Can you get it for me?”

“We will.”

The gentle voice behind the two older wizards was Athos, his hands in his pockets, scruff on his chin and creases in his white shirt. He looked as though he had just woken up from a few days’ worth of sleep.

He looked past Dumbledore towards Porthos and Aramis, and, to Aramis’s astonishment, smiled. “Won’t we?”

Neither of them answered, and after a long moment, Treville nodded firmly, watching Athos with a stern wariness in his eyes, and turned to leave, stepping down the garden path towards the gate. Dumbledore put a hand on Athos’s shoulder, which he didn’t seem to feel, and then turned to follow. The latch of the gate clicked, and they were gone.

“I’m sorry,” Athos said finally, not shrinking under Aramis and Porthos’s stares. “I think I suspected from the beginning that Anne was alive, though I never remembered much of the attack. It took Constance a lot of work to get me back on my feet, and…” He shrugged slightly. “I thought the Horcrux would help me think again. Cut out what wasn’t working, help me decide how I could find Anne and bring her back, so then I could – ”

He trailed off, eyes blank. “Well, I guess I didn’t get that far with the plan.”

“You should’ve waited,” Aramis said. He left the reason why unspoken, but Athos knew, and nodded.

“I know. The irony of it is – one more day, if I’d kept hope for another hour and you’d found me before – ” Something approaching shame was coloring his cheeks. “I wish you had,” he whispered. “I do.”

Porthos stood up, turned to Athos, and stretched out one hand, dark and furious. “Give us the locket,” he said.

A look of genuine bewilderment startled across Athos’s face, and it made hope rise up in Aramis’s chest. Maybe, just maybe, they could still get through to him.

He stood up, too, and planted himself at Porthos’s shoulder. “You heard him. Give it to us.”

Athos’s right hand fumbled up to his chest, gripped the locket underneath the fabric of his shirt. “What will you do with it?” he asked, small and sad.

“Keep it.” Porthos was solid and firm against Aramis’s arm, uncompromising. “Until we find a way to fix you.”

Athos shook his head, his eyes not leaving Porthos’s. “There’s no solution to this.”

“I don’t care,” Porthos rumbled. “We’ll keep it safe for you. For as long as it takes.”

“Why?”

“Je _sus_ ,” Porthos growled. “Do you really want me to try and answer that?”

“Just do it,” Aramis said, a smile tugging at his lips. “Before he attempts any poetry. It won’t end well.”

After a long moment, Athos’s hand went down inside his collar; the chain came up and over his head, and the heavy silver pooled into coils in Porthos’s palm. He collapsed into them, then, as though it had been holding him up, and Aramis couldn’t resist chuckling into the pale crook of his neck.

“You royal idiot,” he mumbled fondly. “Let’s get you back inside.”

He and Porthos carried Athos back into the house and up to the bedroom, where they stayed for a long time, making sure he didn’t forget just what an fool he had been to doubt them. Two days later, in Dumbledore’s presence, they clasped hands and spoke the words that made him and Porthos Secret-Keepers. The shard of Athos’s soul in the locket found a temporary, obscure and now completely protected resting place in a desk-drawer in the Headmaster’s Hogwarts office, and, tracing the lifeline on Athos’s palm, Aramis felt the certainty of a confidence kept until death.

They walked back into the Ministry a week after Berlin. Constance’s greetings consisted of a vicious slap across the face for each of them, followed by her bursting into tears on each of their shoulders. This was repeated every few hours until she calmed down enough to just do it to Athos, and finally petered out into her being sprawled across his lap, both of them completely drunk and mostly asleep, on a bench in Regent’s Park to which they’d all retreated after nightfall.

“They’re so sweet,” Aramis sighed, lifting a bottle in a tipsy salute.

Porthos raised a very sarcastic eyebrow at him. “If there was _any_ innuendo in that statement I will take off the top of your head and wash out your brain with soap,” he drawled.

“Oh, _god,_ ” Aramis shivered. “No. No, no, _no_.”

“Good. Because them two together would be seriously – ”

“ _Petrifying_ , I know…”

By August, with life slowly returning to normal in the office (brandy in the coffee, Athos actually eating a square meal a day, Constance doing her nails at her desk, foiling plots to assassinate Allied generals, missions in the North African desert which left them digging sand out of various crevices for days, the usual kit and caboodle), the Department was stable enough that it was recruiting. Which was why Treville had just introduced a stripling teenager to Aramis while he was making their morning tea in the kitchen – a boy who looked barely old enough to have graduated from Beauxbatons, and a Free French refugee from Treville’s hometown in Gascony, who insisted in no uncertain terms that he was one of the greatest duelers the world had ever seen.

“Well, we’ll see,” Aramis chuckled. “Go introduce yourself to Athos, he’ll be most intrigued to hear that…”

“Athos?” The boy’s eyes narrowed, and suddenly he was bursting past Treville and barreling out of sight, into the office. “You!” he roared a moment later, and Porthos let out a wordless squawk. “C’est vous! Vous avez tué mon père. _Je vous tuerai!_ ”

There was a strangled yelp of surprise, followed by a thud and the sound of a major paper avalanche, as Athos apparently fell out of the chair he’d been sleeping in. “Beg pardon?” came a bewildered moan.

Aramis grinned, dropped two sugars into Porthos’s mug, one into his own, and turned, taking the tea tray past a nonplussed Treville and into the office, where an impressive scene of chaos loomed. Porthos was laughing his behind off in one corner, the boy – d’Artagnan, was it? – was waving his wand around like a maniac and managing to produce not much more than a few desultory green sparks, and Athos, as Aramis had assumed, was sprawled in a pile of gently fluttering memos, gawping like a fish at everything and everyone. Gawping like a very sleepy, extremely hungover fish.

“Tea?” Aramis asked cheerfully.

He decided, in that moment, that they could fix this.

They _would_ fix it.

**FIN  
(Or rather... TBC!)**

[ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1271341/chapters/2634052)

Illustration by [JakartaInn](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1271341/chapters/2626855). Click for full-view.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This Quite Odd Idea originally began as an idea for a totally different fandom, a few years ago, when a friend and I were messing around with an HP AU. Sadly the writing of that fell through because life was super busy then; and then this new fandom invaded my brain and dragged the idea kicking and screaming back into the light. Pilgrim Dalton is a figment of my imagination; I couldn't find a name for a wartime Minister of Magic, so I just made it up. The one quick historical note I have is of the Jamaican experience in WW2: hundreds of Jamaican men, recruited by the RAF, were brought to Britain to work in ground crews on airfields. They and their families later constituted the first wave of Caribbean immigrants to the UK in the twentieth century. Their story has been explored a lot recently in various media, including Andrea Levy’s Orange Prize-winning novel _Small Island_. More information on this history can be found [here](http://www.caribbeanaircrew-ww2.com/) for a start. 
> 
> Title from Spenser's _Amoretti,_ Sonnet VII:
> 
> FAYRE eyes, the myrrour of my mazed hart,  
> what wondrous vertue is contaynd in you  
> the which both lyfe and death forth from you dart  
> into the obiect of your mighty view?  
> For, when ye mildly looke with louely hew,  
> then is my soule with life and loue inspired:  
> but when ye lowre, or looke on me askew  
> then doe I die, as one with lightning fyred.  
> But since that lyfe is more then death desyred,  
> looke euer louely, as becomes you best,  
> that your bright beams of my weak eies admyred,  
> may kindle liuing fire within my brest.  
> Such life should be the honor of your light,  
> such death the sad ensample of your might.
> 
> Thanks for reading! 


	2. II: Libya

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A day in the life, in 1941; or, in which there are falls, Constance is not impressed, and Porthos far prefers the wand over the gun, but he has no idea why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick A/N: the response to this story has been one of the most overwhelming and generous I've ever experienced in all my years of fandom, to which all I can say is _thank you!_ I'll try to keep uploading material as soon as I can, though unfortunately I'm likely to be extremely busy over the next few weeks. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this, along with the incredible art it was inspired by, by JakartaInn.

[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1271341/chapters/2634073)  
"Porthos" by [JakartaInn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JakartaInn/pseuds/JakartaInn). Click for full-view. 

_March 25, 1941_

“Any of you ever heard of Awjila?”

It was noon on the day after Rommel had taken El Agheila, and Porthos had a pounding headache. It had not, thankfully, been caused by the defeat of Allied forces at said El Agheila, but on some level he wished it had been, because admitting that it was because he had lost a drinking competition with Athos – again – just sounded far more pathetic. At any rate, he was in no real fit state (and nor was Aramis, which was at least a source of some smugness and solace) to understand why Constance was in the door of their office, frowning at the stack of papers in her hands, and asking about a place he’d never heard of.

“Should we have?” Aramis mumbled eventually from underneath the cloth bag of ice that was covering his forehead and eyes.

Constance licked a perfectly-manicured finger and leafed through more of the paper stack, scowling, and apparently not caring whether they were listening or not. “Oasis town in Libya. Supposedly still in Allied territory even after yesterday, but the radio post there has stopped transmitting. And the patrols sent to find out what’s been going on have either vanished or come back saying the whole place has just disappeared.”

“And?” Aramis yawned.

“Well, I’m sure I don’t know,” Constance said, rolling her eyes. She turned and dumped the entire stack or reports in front of Athos, who was face-down on the desk, and who leapt up from his sleep like a startled dog as the bottommost piece of paper left a long papercut on his nose.

“The _fuck_ – oh. Oh, god.”

“It wakes,” Constance said dramatically. She turned and flounced out, slamming the door _very_ hard behind her, leaving all three of them yowling in protest.

Eventually – it may have been an hour later, Porthos had lost all sense of time since the previous evening – they were mostly conscious, nursing mugs of tea, and huddled over the papers, examining maps, logs of radio transmissions, and little diagrams of Rommel’s merciless march across the desert. “Well,” Aramis said after twenty minutes, “the radio contact cutting out could just mean the Germans are already there. Rommel’s not going to stop anytime soon, after all.”  
  
“True,” Porthos grunted as he drained the dregs in his cup, “but that doesn’t explain a town of two thousand people disappearing.”

“Apparently they have very good dates there,” Athos said vaguely from behind the report he was reading. At the blank stares he got in return, he just shook his head. “Dates. The fruit – never mind.”

By the time they had finished reading and made a plan, it was early evening, and Porthos was in charge of getting in the fish and chips for their supper before they all bedded down at the house where Athos had lived since Hogwarts, which was as ludicrously posh as he was and magically embedded in, of all places, Bedford Square. Athos had two drinks instead of seven, and then left them to it in one of the guest bedrooms, apparently not in the mood for company; and, at two in the morning, Porthos woke to find Aramis restless and panting next to him, in the grip of a dream.

It took two slaps to wake him up, and when he did open his eyes, Aramis gasped and clutched hard at Porthos’s arm. “I saw – ”

“Shh, hush,” Porthos soothed, clasping Aramis’s sweaty face to his chest. “You’re all right. Was it a prophecy?”

“I don’t – maybe. There was a shield, but with no heraldry,” Aramis said, his breath slowly lengthening. “And bones, broken bones.”

None of that sounded very promising, but with no general idea of what to expect, all Porthos could do was sigh, get them back to sleep, and wait for morning.

They Apparated to the town of Jalu after breakfast, carrying brooms but dressed in full desert fatigues, heavy dark boots and lightweight jackets, in an effort to be comfortable. It was, Porthos thought as they stood blinking in the far-too-bright sun, one of the most beautiful places he had ever been. The desert seemed endless, and the town was a little sparkling jewel in the middle of it; even washed out in the sunlight, the blue of the oasis and the green of the trees was almost painful to the eyes.

The one road in town led out north-west across the desert, supposedly towards Awjila, and so they mounted up and began to fly along it. It was getting hot, close to unbearably so, but the wind created as they flew seemed to pluck the heat right away from Porthos. He was, he realized, as they swooped along twenty-five feet above the rough road, Aramis and Athos just behind him, incredibly excited.

“So,” he called across to Athos at one point, “do we have a theory yet as to what a Dark wizard might be doing out here, if that’s what it is?”

“Treville thinks it’s cover,” Athos responded, his eyes narrowed against the sun. “Creating a safe zone for Rommel, perhaps, or just the start of a magical attack that’ll spread east. Whatever it is, we’ll clear the village.”

They were just a few miles into their journey, and Jalu had just disappeared into the heatwaves on the horizon, when it happened. There was an exclamation of shock from Aramis, and suddenly he was shouting at Porthos’s back. “Stop – Porthos, stop! Get back here now!”

Porthos turned his head, but it was too late: his broom _died_ beneath him, as though all the magic had suddenly gone out of it and he was just straddling a lump of wood, and he started to plummet. He was unprepared, and had barely any time – as he heard Aramis yelling at Athos, too, warning him to hover in place – to brace himself for the impact.

When it came, he landed flat on his back, and pain _seared_ up and down his spine, into his legs, into his head. It drove all the air out of his lungs, literally, and as he lay unmoving, his mouth worked, trying desperately to suck in air. Aramis had dismounted from his broom and run to his side before he finally managed to rasp out the pain, and his chest started to rise and fall again.

“Christ, Porthos,” Aramis said, also sounding breathless, his hands fluttering anxiously over Porthos as he delicately checked for injuries, making sure not to move his back or neck.

“What,” Porthos croaked, “was that?”

“Shield Charm,” Athos growled as he prowled in circles ten feet away, just where Porthos had suddenly fallen, and suddenly it all made sense – Aramis’s dream, Awjila disappearing, the magic fleeing from the broom. There was definitely a Dark wizard nearby, and he had cast a _Protego_ spell so powerful that he had made an entire oasis disappear.

Aramis caught the look of realization on Porthos’s face, and nodded. “Yeah. The shield.”

Porthos groaned, and made the first effort to move his arms and legs – it hurt, like hell, but they did move, and, to his surprise, the damage didn’t feel too deep. “But no broken bones,” he grunted, and Aramis sighed in relief. “I think.”

“Oh, good,” Aramis said, smiling, his eyes saying _You really need to start listening to me more often you big git_ and _Don’t you fucking do that to me again._ “Something to look forward to.”

Athos came back to them, shaking his head. “Nothing. The charm’s rendered our brooms and wands useless inside the barrier.”

“So,” Porthos rumbled, trying to keep his mind away from the pain, “how we gonna do this raid, then?”

“The old-fashioned way,” Athos said wryly, as he reached down and squeezed Porthos’s shoulder. “Wait here.”

He got up, jogged the few paces he needed to get past the spell, and mounted his broom, streaking away back in the direction they’d come. By the time he returned, an hour later, with a six-by-four foot crate dangling beneath him, Porthos had recovered enough to sit up (extremely slowly) and, with Aramis’s shoulder under one of his armpits, stagger outside of the reach of the charm, where he could finally have his ribs tightly wrapped and water trickled down his face courtesy of Aramis’s wand. He could feel what would probably be the worst sunburn of his life starting to worm its way under his skin.

Athos started to unpack the crate, depositing three Thompson submachine guns, belts of Mills bomb grenades, six Enfield revolvers, Fairbairn knives, and two packs filled with hard biscuits and calabash gourds of water onto the sand. There was a ridiculously cumbersome-looking and heavy tent, too, and three square wooden boxes of ammunition. The only thing that was absent, Porthos noted, with extreme gratitude, was any suggestion that he wouldn’t be going with them.

“We’re about twenty-five kilometres away from where Awjila is supposed to be,” Athos said, as he picked up a Thompson and slung it across his front so the trigger was easy to reach with his right hand. “We’ll take it slowly, camp just out of sight this evening, and attack at dawn.” He looked at Porthos. “Aramis and I will take the packs, for now. You take the brooms – we may need them once we’re in and we’ve broken the charm.”

They were an extremely odd-looking convoy, Porthos thought later, as they started to trudge through the blasted terrain, keeping a few hundred yards to the side of the road so they could drop down and remain unseen were anyone to drive along it. Athos led the way with the tent on top of his pack and one box of ammunition on his shoulder; Aramis followed with each arm supporting the other two boxes, his gun banging off his chest with each step, and Porthos followed as quickly as he could behind them, the three brooms in one massive hand and all of their wands in his back pocket, the third Thompson on his back. As much as it chafed not to be able to help with more of the equipment, he couldn’t deny that everything still hurt, and that he probably wasn’t capable of lifting an arm up high enough to support anything on his shoulder. The movement helped, though, even when he stumbled on rocks or they found themselves struggling through patches of softer sand, their boots sinking deep and heavily.

Within an hour, they had sweated through their shirts. After two, they had to stop so Athos and Aramis could pour water down their faces and throats, and Porthos, with a slight growl that promised injury to anyone who tried to stop him, grabbed the tent and jammed it under one of his arms as they started to walk again. After three hours, his back was starting not just to ache, but to flash with pain in each vertebrae; Athos estimated they had covered just over ten kilometres, and they stopped again, swapping around boxes and bags and grenades until they felt ready to get up again.

And so it went on. In the mid-afternoon, though he was thoroughly miserable and completely bored with the mirages that kept promising water and cool green grass at the edges of his peripheral vision, Porthos sensed that the hottest part of the day was past, and a wind began to pick up, both driving the heat away from their skin and blowing abrasive sand into their eyes and mouths. Athos stopped briefly, pulled three black _shemaghs_ out of his pack, and tossed one to each of them to wind around their heads and necks.

By six o’clock, the sun was well on its way to setting, and the wind had died down, but the temperature was also dropping precipitously. As they started to crest a dune, Athos held out a hand to stop them, and then, dropping his pack and the box of ammunition, jogged forward a few hundred yards on his own to peer over the ridge.

“It’s there,” he called as he walked back. “A kilometer or so, two at the most. We’ll stay here for the night.”

The equipment and weapons tumbled into piles; Athos worked on putting up the tent, Aramis took out the biscuits (and promptly turned his nose up at them), and Porthos lowered himself slowly down to the ground with a grunt, resting his head on a bluntish rock. He must have fallen into an uneasy sleep almost immediately, because when he opened his eyes again he had to blink, several times, to be sure of what he was seeing.

The sky was so close, he thought, that he could have reached out and plucked down a star in the palm of his hand. Though he was aware of the ground below and around him, the desert had turned black – and, of course, Athos hadn’t lit a fire – leaving only brilliance above him. The only time he could remember seeing a sky this clear had been when he’d visited Aramis’s family in the Middle of Nowhere, Spain, what felt like an age ago, and even that didn’t come close to this.

A foot crunched by his ear, startling him into motion, and his back immediately protested. He groaned as Aramis lowered himself cross-legged next to him – he could just make out his silhouette – and shifted, trying to find a more comfortable position to lie in, ending up with his hands on his stomach and his legs slowly stretching in and out in an attempt to loosen up his spine. “How long w’s I asleep?” he asked roughly.

“A few hours. It’s not very late.” Aramis titled his head upwards too, and chuckled. “Brilliant, isn’t it.”

“Unbelievable,” Porthos yawned, nodding. “Where’s Athos?”

“Told him I’d take first watch, but I doubt he’s sleeping. He’s got some oil in the tent – probably making sure the guns don’t jam in the morning.”

Aramis reached over and grabbed Porthos’s shoulders, manhandling him sideways until his head was in Aramis’s lap. “Better than a rock?”

“Mm,” Porthos said, smiling as his eyes slipped closed. “But you’re in the way of the view.”

“Sorry.”

“No y’re not,” Porthos grunted. Aramis just laughed, and kissed him, and Porthos lost track of time, again, for a while.

When they broke apart, Aramis sighed, scratching the side of his neck, his other hand in Porthos’s hair; it was cold, Porthos realized suddenly, almost brutally so, and they were both starting to shiver. “Are you going to be alright?” Aramis asked.

“What, for the raid?” Porthos frowned. “I’ve dealt with worse injuries than this on the bloody Quidditch pitch.”

“Not that,” Aramis said, shaking his head. He reached down by his side, and when his hand came up far enough again for Porthos to see it, he was holding one of the Enfield revolvers, the barrel glinting slightly in the starlight. “This. Not exactly what we planned for, is it.”

Porthos shrugged uncomfortably. “I dunno. Doesn’t seem right, somehow. Filling someone full of metal.”

“It’s death,” Athos’s voice said behind them, hard and cold. In the dark, Porthos couldn’t make out his face, but he could tell he was standing there somewhere, staring out across the desert. “I don’t see how it can matter whether it’s by the gun or by the wand.”

They all stayed there for a few minutes, in quiet, until Athos sighed and turned away from the sky. “Come into the tent. We’ll need to stay close for warmth.”

“Cheeky bastard,” Aramis murmured, and Porthos couldn’t resist laughing.

The warmth, though, did help, and not just physically, as they layered arms and legs on top of each other, backs against chests and chins tucked into each others’ necks. The next time Porthos was shaken awake it was by Athos, and Aramis was already outside the tent, suiting up. Despite what they were about to do, Porthos couldn’t help admiring his lads as they stuffed cartridges into pockets, guns into holsters, and strapped the twelve-inch Fairbairn knives to their hips. He felt invincible, suddenly, and as they abandoned the tents, boxes and brooms, started jogging steadily northward, and crested the hill they’d been hiding behind, the sight of the gorgeous oasis below them, palm trees and long green grass slowly being lit by the rising sun, made his back stop hurting just like that.

The bucking of the Thompson beneath his hands, the wild, unbearable noise it made, brought him back down to earth, but not back into himself. He had little idea of what happened next, though flashes came through to him: a troop of German soldiers, sleepy and panicked – Arab faces, looking out from the doorjambs of dark houses and just as quickly retreating – Athos throwing a grenade into what, judging by the wires, had been the radio office and turning casually away from the blast – Aramis, his Thompson jammed and discarded, with an Enfield in each hand as he rose from the body of a soldier with a knife through its chest.

In the chaos, Athos took out the Dark wizard – a fat, balding man in his 50s, sweating through a German desert uniform – with a single shot to the head. Despite the relief of the rush of the released magic down his spine as the brains splattered across the floor in the ramshackle hut where their enemy had taken shelter, Porthos resigned himself, there and then, to his nightmares.

The foreseen broken bone turned out to belong to Aramis, as his left forearm splintered when an enemy soldier threw him against a wall. The remaining Germans scattered quickly, however, once they discovered their magical ally dead, and Porthos helped Athos chase them out of the village into the trucks which they used to retreat in a rush across the desert, dust clouding up in their wake as they sprayed warning bullets into the sand after them. As Porthos tended to Aramis’s arm – it really was so much easier to deal with using magic – Athos retrieved his wand from Porthos’s pocket, and, once he’d taken care of Obliviating the bewildered witnesses to their slaughter, piled all of the guns, ammunition, and grenades just outside the reach of the oasis-fed foliage, and blew them to smithereens. Porthos had become used, over the past year, to the fact that Athos’s well-leashed emotions ran deeper than he could ever know, but even he was surprised by the look of furious disgust on his friend’s face as the crumpled metal and gunpowder burned.

Given the state both Porthos and Aramis were in, it was Athos who was in charge of Apparating them home. When their heads cleared, they found themselves standing, sweaty, sandy and just generally filthy, in the familiar, cool, and dim front room of _chez Bonacieux_.

“Well, I’m glad you’re back,” Constance said, stock still in the doorway to the kitchen, a bottle of wine in her hand, and her eyes perfect little circles of shock. “But what on _earth_ have you done to your faces, you idiots?”

A group check in her small bathroom mirror confirmed that their skin was ludicrously red, chapped and blistered from the desert sun. Porthos, however, was too tired to care much, and the last things he remembered before falling asleep on the settee were Aramis mewling in the kitchen as Constance rubbed some sort of horrible red gelatin over his face (“Stay _still,_ it’ll _help –_ ” "But what _is_ it – ”); and Athos, standing at the window with a mostly-empty glass of wine dangling between his fingers, looking in vain for stars.

**TBC**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endnotes: as you may have seen, this doesn't fit exactly into the timeline I set up in the main fic, but hopefully it's still true to the world I hoped to create. I bumped the invention of 'sunscreen' forward a few years, from 1944: it was actually invented to help soldiers in the Pacific, and was apparently disgusting. I'm not as well versed in the African campaigns as I probably should be, so apologies up front if any of the details I tried to weave in on that front are out of joint.


	3. III: Dreaming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aramis usually has a grip on his dreams; capture, torture, and Athos being a git, however....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not much levity in this chapter, I'm afraid, but I hope you enjoy it! Featuring, as ever, the wonderful art of [JakartaInn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JakartaInn/pseuds/JakartaInn).

  
[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1271341/chapters/2655280)  
Illustration by [JakartaInn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JakartaInn/pseuds/JakartaInn). Click for full-size.

*

Aramis’s dreams, when he had them, were never very pleasant.

He had learned from Professor Trelawney and others that to have a future sight was almost always a burden, whether one was aware of it or not. At thirteen years old, sweating and shaking in his bed from nightmares he could neither understand nor explain, he had been envious of her gift – and by that he meant the gift of ignorance. He had never seen her prophesy without immediately losing her memory of it; he had never seen her emerge from her trances and promptly scream and pace as he did, overwhelmed with the knowledge someone was going to die. His dreams were almost always about death, in those early days; discussing it, reluctantly, with Isaac, and taking comfort in the pure concern and love he had felt from his best friend, they guessed that it was his ability’s way of announcing itself, of reminding him of its demanding presence, of the fact he would never be free.

Over the years the dreams had become no less frequent, but he had grown into an adult, and that had made all the difference. He learned how to wake himself up – to keep a kernel of himself in a deep, dark place that only he could reach, a warm room in which Porthos sat with two glasses of Scotch and that ridiculous smile of his, telling him to open his eyes. Alcohol helped, too (that solution was brought most sharply into relief by Athos’s habits, which Aramis realized over time were deliberately forced on him in the effort to make sure he got a decent night’s sleep), especially after the war began and he began to receive dreaming missives from all over the world, forcing the knowledge of massacres and explosions and tortures and mass graves into his head from Rotterdam to Rangoon.  

It was August 1943, now, and he was still recovering from the aftereffects of a bad night as he and Porthos wandered over the grounds of the country manor to which they’d Apparated for the latest monthly Muggle Training Day in Dorset. It was a beautiful house, all marble on top of the brick and the previous owner probably living in the groundskeeper’s cottage; the main building itself had been taken over by the Army, and the grounds were pockmarked with dummies for practice with bayonets, dug up into fields of dirty mounds and ridges covered with barbed wire over which they would crawl while soldiers shot over their heads. Aramis yawned as he buttoned up his Army jacket, and ran a hand through his bedraggled hair.

“You alright for this?” Porthos asked, steady as a rock at his elbow.

“Of course. Just tired.”

Porthos nodded, looking across the lawn to where other wizards and witches were Apparating in, congregating around a nervous-looking officer in dress uniform. “Remind me what it was?”

“Water,” Aramis said, his mind drifting. His step faltered a little before he caught himself. “And soap.” _Drowning_ , he didn’t add.

“Maybe it’s a prediction that we’ll finally get Athos to take a bath,” Porthos chuckled as the man in question Apparated into the group ahead of them, scowling through a very visible hangover, and with a very excited-looking d’Artagnan at his side.

The morning followed a very similar pattern to the two dozen they had already attended since the start of the war. The Muggle officers started off unnerved at the presence of what they had been told were witches, but within an hour were so frustrated with their charges’ general incompetence that all fear went out the window and their natural professionalism took over. After that it was mostly just a lot of shouting, as the wizards sweated on their bellies as they wriggled under the wires, stabbed awkwardly at burlap sacks stuffed with rice and barley, and steadied themselves as best they could for the recoil of pistols in their hands and the very obvious misses, as the targets at the other end of the lawn remained completely unharmed. It was depressing, Aramis thought several times over the morning, to realize that he, Porthos, and Athos were by far the veterans of the group. He felt old, and lucky, and very exhausted indeed, as the three of them hit their targets with unerring accuracy, and patently failed to flinch at the snap of bullets through the air.

(Constance was there for the pistol training, which struck even a sleep-deprived Aramis as unusual.  d’Artagnan stood next to her the whole time, helped her heft the heavy weight of the guns in her small hands; Athos didn’t take his eyes off her, followed her until she Apparated back to the office with a tired, sad look on his face. By the end of the session with the Brownings, she had proven herself a disturbingly good shot.)

They were given an hour’s break for lunch, and Aramis used it to retreat to the little chapel on the grounds, whose door he unlocked with a quick mutter of magic. It was dusty, but quiet – peaceful. He sat in the second of two pews, looked up at the discolored window above the altar which was throwing weak light onto the whitewashed walls, crossed himself, and waited for calm.

The stillness was interrupted a few minutes later by d’Artagnan, who, Aramis could tell even with his eyes closed, paused at the door after swinging it open far too hard, and then crept in meekly, settling awkwardly next to Aramis. “Everything alright?”

“Mm,” Aramis sighed. “I like it in here.”

“In churches?” Aramis opened his eyes, and saw d’Artagnan’s very teenaged nose wrinkling up in confusion, or perhaps disgust. “It’s just fairytales, this stuff. Isn’t it?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Aramis smirked. “The Muggles think _we_ don’t exist. We should pay them the respect that as they are wrong about our magic, we could be wrong about theirs.”

d’Artagnan blushed, and, to Aramis’s somewhat surprised pleasure, stayed quiet for a long time. Aramis said a _Pater Noster_ in his head, and closed his eyes again. It was warm outside, but his sweat was cooling on his skin in the dark recesses of the chapel, reminding him of stiff dry breezes on Spanish plains, white-clad nuns, the dust of ash on his forehead. He had learned his prayers in Latin at age six; now, at twenty-eight, he remembered the words but not what they meant (Athos, with his stupidly posh public school education before Hogwarts, no doubt knew more Latin than he did). He still spoke them to himself, however, still found solace in the rising and falling cadences, and the potential of salvation they promised. He liked the way they felt on his tongue.

“So, euh,” d’Artagnan eventually said. “You believe it, then? Their gods, and all that?”

“I sympathize with their saints,” Aramis murmured. “With their visions. And their terror.”

After lunch, Aramis told himself to wake up and pay attention – because this was the sort of training he was actually good at, and with which he could combine his skill in potions. It was the first aid drill, which, as always, progressed from simple bandaging and packing off of fake gashes and wounds to the tying of tourniquets, the saw for broken and mangled bones, the forcing of joints back into place. Aramis knew that his potions could cure the aftereffects of a spell, but the highly efficient methods of killing that Muggles had perfected required an entirely different mentality.

He would never forget the first time he had done this: the first time the Army officer had grabbed his hand, forced his fingers into a pig’s carcass, told him that one day he would do this to one of his friends, one of his men, pushing his fingernails through ragged flesh to clamp down upon a lacerated artery until help got to them. His dreams had been full of blood (Porthos’s blood, it was always Porthos’s blood) for weeks afterwards, and would be again.

He had just finished off a fake amputation, throwing the leg of a dummy away from him, when Athos came over and tapped him on the shoulder, Porthos at his side. “Come with me. Treville had them set up a special exercise for us.” d’Artagnan, who had been working with Aramis, got halfway to standing before Athos held out a hand, stopping him. “Not you.”

Aramis frowned at Athos as they walked, in retaliation for the kicked-puppy look on d’Artagnan’s face. “It’s been two years. I would’ve thought you’d include him in everything we do by this point.”

“Not this,” Athos said with a shake of his head, not even deigning to look at Aramis as they walked into the mansion, and then took a flight of cold stone stairs down to what appeared to be a basement or cold pantry. “Even I wouldn’t ask him to do this.”

There was nothing in the cellar except an iron tub of filmy water, an officer in German uniform whose face looked frozen in stone, and two very big soldiers.

“You’ve _got_ to be joking,” Porthos said.

“We’ve lost two Aurors recently because their positions were given up by wizards who had been captured,” Athos replied. Aramis stared at him: their friend, it seemed, was having one of his hell-is-empty-and-all-the-devils-are-here sort of days, the ones which started in hopelessness and self-loathing and ended in Guinness and blackout. He turned to look at them, a twisted smile at the corner of his mouth. “Treville wants us to be trained in counter-interrogation techniques. Dealing with a _Crucio_ is one thing, but I’m told this is quite another.”

“Oh, _well_ then, _do_ feel free to go first,” Aramis said nastily, his exhaustion finally getting the better of him as he gestured to the tub with an expansive sweep of his arm. “Since you seem to _want_ it so much.”

He realized as soon as Porthos’s hand landed on his elbow that he had gone too far; didn’t even need to look at Athos’s expression to know that that had hit too close to home, too close to Athos’s fucking _infuriating_ desire to self-destruct, to surrender up the pieces of his fractured soul and rest, the only thing keeping him tethered to earth being the duty he felt towards justifying the admiration that Aramis, Porthos, and now d’Artagnan held for him. Athos’s eyes shuttered, and he turned away, taking off his jacket, rolling up his sleeves.

 _Water. Soap_.

Aramis hated it when his dreams came true. He really, really did.

It was a nightmare that he was watching, a waking nightmare. Within ten seconds of Athos’s head going into the water, a growl had started in the back of Porthos’s throat, and it didn’t stop; neither did the jerking thrash of Athos’s shoulders under the hands of the restraining soldiers, as the soap no doubt worked its way into eyes, nose, and mouth. The officer had him pulled out of the water again and again, shouted incomprehensible questions into his face in hard, clipped, furious German, the dismissive wave of his fingers ordering the dunking up and down; until, finally, Athos’s legs gave out beneath him.

The transformation of the officer from tormentor into concerned, extremely British gentleman was almost as disturbing as the mock interrogation itself.

“There you go, mate, just breathe,” the Muggle said as he helped a violently-shaking Athos into a crouched seating position against the nearest wall. “You’ll be fine. Bloody good job.”

He waited a moment, checking on Athos’s dazed eyes, before he nodded and stood up, wiping his palms on his trousers. “Who’s next, chaps?”

Aramis wanted to be sick. If it hadn’t been for Porthos clasping his arm again and nodding, telling him he would do it, he probably would have been. He staggered out of the room into the corridor next to the stairs, sank down onto his heels, shut his eyes, and tried as hard as he could not to listen.

When Porthos eventually came out to join him, dripping wet and wobbling, Aramis felt bile rising up in his throat. “Please,” he forced out. “Please don’t make me go in there.”

“Hey,” Porthos said, his concern radiating outwards even through the green tinge on his face and the frantic blinking of his eyes, trying to keep out the lingering sting of the soap. “It’s alright, you don’t have to – ”

But then the soldiers came out of the room, grabbed Aramis under each arm, and the next thing he remembered was a dream _rising_ before his eyes, corpses and pickaxes and lanterns; Porthos, Athos, d’Artagnan, Constance all lifeless and accusing in their vacancy, the Ministry in flames. He opened his mouth to scream, and the water flooded in, and –

He woke with a start, choking, spewing filthy liquid from his mouth and nose as Porthos and Athos held him firm in their grip, scraping back his hair as he vomited.

“My God,” Aramis panted eventually. “What happened?”

Later, back at the office, Treville explained that the staged interrogation had caused him to dream so violently that he fell into a trance, intoning prophecies in tongues they could barely understand. The commander looked at him hard, his shoulders tense and braced as though he expected Aramis to attack him at any moment.

“Your gift is a potent one,” Treville said eventually, his fingers drumming hard on his desk. “At the moment, it appears to be uncontrolled. Do I need to take you out of the field?”

“ _No_ ,” Aramis burst out immediately, his fingers twisting in his pockets. “No. Don’t do that. I can handle it.”

“And if you’re captured?”

Aramis grinned, but there was no mirth in it. “I won’t get captured.”

*

  
[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1271341/chapters/2722042)  
Illustration by [JakartaInn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JakartaInn/pseuds/JakartaInn). Click for full-size.

ZAUBERER | WIZARD  
GEFANGENNAHME | CAPTURED  
VERWUNDET | WOUNDED  
SEHER | SEER

Over the next month, they flew to Romania to ensure bombs hit their intended targets, and clouds of foul-smelling smoke poured upwards towards their brooms from the destroyed refineries; they took part in the recapture of Belgrood by the Russians, and Aramis couldn’t help but be horrified at the sight of the tanks, of the _hundreds_ of metal beasts, as they lumbered across the darkening landscape; they arrived too late to be of any help in the ghetto of Bialystok, and Porthos did not sleep for three nights; they were not asked to go to the Solomon Islands, and Aramis thanked his Muggle gods for it. They were in liberated Sicily, finally, and staring across at the Italian mainland, exhausted to the bone, when Aramis realized he had started to hate Athos, and it hurt.

He couldn’t remember when, exactly, was the first time that he realized that Athos was using the fact of his ostensible immortality to deliberately put himself in danger. It may have been when he fractured a leg jumping off a broom to tackle a wizard who had Porthos at wandpoint in Tunisia, or the infliction of a half-dozen other injuries caused by activities which would earn him medals from Muggles, but only frustration from Aramis as he patched him up in the aftermath; or, more likely, it was when he stepped in front of an Unforgiveable at Stalingrad that had been meant for d’Artagnan. It had been a _Crucio_ , not the _Avada Kedavra_ – thankfully, Aramis almost thought at the time, because if he had been hit by the Death Curse and lived, they would have had a hell of a lot of explaining to do to the boy. The look on d’Artagnan’s face as Athos collapsed onto him, however, still made it clear that none of it was all right – that Athos, though he insisted time and time again, made it clear in his clenched fists and his fierce glares in the face of any protest that he did it to protect them and not to punish himself, had no right to deny d’Artagnan the consequences of his mistakes, or to treat someone who idolized him so much with such condescension.

Aramis told himself it was about d’Artagnan, and, most often, he flattered himself that it really was. But there were moments – particularly the all-too-frequent times when Porthos was slumbering against his shoulder, and he, half-asleep, reached out across the bed for Athos and found him gone – when he allowed himself to be angry for his own sake. The problem, of course, was that he could think of literally nothing to say, or do, which hadn’t been done or said before by all of them, that would make Athos stop.

In September the Allied invasion of Italy began, and the four of them were sent to Salerno to head off any magical interference in the landing of the amphibious forces as they crawled over the beaches and into the town. They had never fought in a city before, not on this grand scale, and so they went in fully-armed, bristling with weapons as well as their wands, a bag packed full of medical supplies on Aramis’s hip. And then, halfway through the day, as metal zipped overhead and mortars rained chunks of stone and plaster and dust, Athos jumped out of the bomb crater where they’d been hiding and started to run into the oncoming fire, apparently planning to throw a grenade into a distant sniper’s nest. It felt inevitable, to Aramis, when he fell like a sack of bricks, and lay still.

“ _Fuck,_ ” d’Artagnan screamed, and tried to get up and run to him; Porthos restrained the snarling boy, and it was Aramis who leapt out and rushed along the smoky street to find Athos wheezing through the gaping rip across his throat, clutching at Aramis’s sleeve with bloody hands.

Aramis remembered the pig’s carcass; remembered the sickening slide of wet flesh against his fingers as they now dove into Athos’s throat, found the racing throb of blood as it escaped the artery, and stopped it. It was a heady, raging feeling, the sensation of Athos’s life pulsing against his fingerprint.

“You _wanker_ ,” he hissed, deliriously, his face mere inches from Athos as his other hand flailed in his bag for his wand, for bandages, for _something_ , as bombs and bullets burst around him. “We will _not allow_ this _any_ more, you hear me?” he shouted over the din. “If you die in front of him,” he continued, jerking his head back at the crater, and, he saw Athos understand, at d’Artagnan, “I will _never forgive you_.”

He dug his finger in a little deeper, only half necessarily, the other half definitely to cause Athos pain. Athos spasmed beneath him, and, mercifully, passed out.

Later, back in London, with Athos in Mungo’s and d’Artagnan sitting like an unstrung marionette in the office as Constance encouraged him to drink cup after cup of brandied coffee, Porthos came to Aramis, put both of his hands on his shoulders, forced him to meet his gaze.

“I can guess what you said,” Porthos rumbled, brown eyes dark and sorrowful. “But give him time, mate. It’ll take a lot to remind him that we mean it.”

Aramis pinched the bridge of his nose, watching sparks dance behind his eyelids, and sighed.

*

In December, in the middle of the fiercest blizzards Aramis had ever had the misfortune to experience, they were back at the front, keeping watch for Dark wizards as the Allies fought their way past the Gustav Line and eventually succeeded in taking Ortona. In amongst the ruins and the chaos, a wall collapsed at Aramis’s side, blinding and choking him with dust, and a chunk of brick crashed into the side of his head, crunching into the juncture of his neck.

When he woke up, feverish and disoriented, it was to the sight of his bloody wrists in cuffs, and the sensation of dread rising up his throat.

“ _Ah, er wacht auf,_ ” a bored voice said, and Aramis coughed.

“Ich spreche kein Deutsch,” he mumbled, attempting to focus his vision.

“Well, clearly you speak some,” the same voice said, this time in a very English accent indeed, and Aramis moaned, letting his head drop down between his knees – he could feel a freezing stone floor beneath his arse, and what was probably blood dripping from his temple. He thought, very briefly, of trying to Apparate, but the fact that he could barely move meant that he would definitely risk splinching if he tried, or worse. He wanted Porthos, suddenly and desperately, more than he had ever wanted anything before. He wanted to know that Porthos wasn’t in this prison with him, and he wanted to sleep.

His arm was lifted, suddenly, and he panicked, hurling himself backwards from the blurry silhouettes of his captors, but it was too late – a needle sunk deep into the underside of his elbow, plunged something into his veins, and withdrew before he was even able to try twisting away.

Less than five minutes later, it started. He was awake and yet dreaming, hallucinations dancing in front of him, and it was the living definition of the hell he had heard described in the sermons he’d attended in the looming Catholic churches of his childhood.

“ _Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur Nomen Tuum –_ ”

He babbled. He screamed. He intoned. After a while, the Nazis and their tame wizard started to beat him, fists sinking into his ribs and sternum and driving the air out of his lungs; he had absolutely no idea whether it was because they wanted him to prophesy even more, or because he had predicted their defeat and they didn’t like what they were hearing. There was a big difference between the two, at any rate, and he could do little but retreat, searching desperately within his mind for that room where Porthos waited as his mouth ran riot, snarling out death after death after death, and he felt his eyes leaking tears for himself and the world. An imaginary bomb, brighter and more devastating than anything he could have imagined or would ever witness again, obliterated the ground beneath him.

“ _Adveniat Regnum Tuum, fiat voluntas Tua, sicut in caelo et in terra –_ ”

He had no idea how long it continued, but, suddenly, there was relief. Light flared around him, but it wasn’t an explosion; Porthos’s face appeared before him, and, in a brief moment of lucidity, Aramis knew he was real, and reached out to cup his cheeks in his blistered hands. Porthos’s own massive palms curled under his arms and lifted him halfway upright, and, to Aramis’s surprise and yet not, Athos was there too, clutching around Aramis’s filthy and sprained ankles.

“d’Artagnan,” Athos roared to their unseen comrade, as gunfire echoed around the room. “ _Cover us_.”

Aramis let himself fall into sleep gladly, in the arms of his lover and in the protection of a friend whom, it seemed, he had finally convinced to live. If he woke up and these things remained the same, it would have been worth it.

It would be worth every nightmare.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: it’s unclear to me – after some admittedly perfunctory reading – exactly what the Nazis might have used as a “truth serum” drug. In fact, the idea that they widely used such a thing at all may be an urban myth of sorts, though an investigative article I consulted that was written in 1951 implied they may have used scopolamine, an alkaloid which can induce hallucinations and a state of severe susceptibility or hypnosis in high doses (and there are hints around the ‘net that Josef Mengele is rumored to have experimented with such drugs, too). LSD, the true original ‘truth drug,’ was first synthesized in 1938 by Albert Hofmann, a Swiss scientist, and was later developed and used by the CIA in the 1950s. The idea of the counter-interrogation training was borrowed from an episode of the wonderful home front drama _Foyle’s War_ which featured the early SOE (Special Operations Executive, forerunner of MI6), specifically episode 3x01 “The French Drop.”
> 
> Also: apologies if I got even the tiny amount of German in here wrong! I’m studying Dutch at the moment so I should have been able to figure it out but I’m still unsure if it’s correct…


	4. IV: Constancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Norway, Constance and Athos prop each other up – with the help of far too much alcohol, a stubborn French Resistance operative, and the lindy hop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit less of the war in this chapter, but lots of relationships – I had no idea it was going to get so long, but given that I have many, many feels for Constance, Athos, and Ninon individually, putting them all in the same piece probably made it inevitable. Thanks as always to the extremely talented JakartaInn for her amazing illustrations. I hope you enjoy it!

*

[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1271341/chapters/2786647)  
"The Ministry of War" by [JakartaInn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JakartaInn/pseuds/JakartaInn). Click for full-size.

*

Though in retrospect she knew it had been the beginning of her downfall, Constance had never regretted her decision to go to a Muggle university after Hogwarts. At the time, she had done it to do something wild; later, she knew it was because she had been sick of being wild, of being the Gryffindor with the fiery hair who was friends with everyone and known by no one, of daring herself to ever greater heights in school, on the Quidditch pitch, with her well-meaning but increasingly exasperated family. Oxford, in 1935, promised relief.

And, indeed, she got it. She got it from her tutors, who were for the most part condescending old men who were content to call her a good girl, and leave her to her to do her degree in literature on her own; she got it from the other girls in that world where they were few and far between, who, when they were all together in the rooms of Somerville College, talked about normal things like dresses and novels and the dance at the end of term; she got it from the unexpected calm of leaving her wand behind her in her bedroom, gathering dust in a drawer of her dressing table. And, when she was twenty-one and in the Bodleian, reading Spenser and giggling over his tales of knights and dragons, she got it from Bonacieux, a timid young man she had shared a drink with at a pub by accident when someone ordered in a general round, who was studying law and intended to go into the business of foreign imports.

“I know what you are, you know,” he’d said once, gently, several weeks into their shy courtship over piles of dusty books. “No, please,” he’d added, looking panicked, as she stood up from her chair, wondering whether she should run. “My parents are – like you. Not me, though.”

And that, too, was a relief. Bonacieux gave her a typewriter as an engagement gift, and she gave him a token of her past life – a moving photograph of herself waving at him which he could look at when he traveled for work, which would be often. When she went home after her final term and announced that she intended to marry a Squib, she caused general astonishment and not a little consternation; but at the time, she had been happy. She still hadn’t decided, in fact, whether she would ever care to use magic again.

Over the next two years, however, once they’d moved into his small, neat house in Hammersmith, it started to sink in that the calm Oxford had given her now felt like the trap of apathy. Bonacieux was home only a few days in every few weeks, spending most of his time tending to accounts in Liverpool and Bristol, but, for love of the old family home they were living in, refused to move them away from London. And Constance, as 1938 turned into 1939, and then as the Nazis blitzed into Poland, realized that she was fed up.

The day she marched into Treville’s office at the Ministry and told him she was the one to run his war for him, she was petrified. The next day, when he sent an owl with a letter saying the job was hers, she had never felt better.

The new War Department was a chaotic place in those early days, and she had a lot on her plate alongside the worry of what Bonacieux would say if he ever found out (she had set magical alarms on the house to let her know when he returned home, when he ever did, and rehearsed to perfection a series of excuses – shopping, seeing friends, a film – to deploy when she walked in five minutes after him). Treville proved to be a good boss, though, and a good friend, who always trusted her capabilities, and within a month of the start of the war, in October 1939, they had run their first re-training sessions with current and prospective Aurors, and had built their first team.

The golden pair of the group had, there was no doubt about it, been Oliver and Anne (née Brewer) Fairbanks – or, as Constance quickly learned to call them, Athos and Milady. His brother Thomas trailed in their wake, but was capable enough, and as the Phoney War stretched into the beginning of 1940, the three of them completed so many fact-finding missions behind enemy lines in Poland that Treville was confident of the identities and locations of dozens of Dark wizards for the months ahead. Constance was in awe of them, of their straight backs and bright eyes, of the sight of Milady perched on Athos’s lap as they shared a drink at the successful conclusion of a mission, his hand playing with a locket she always wore between the folds of her shirt; of Thomas’s good humor, which, notwithstanding, could be cutting at times. He was the same age as Constance, and had been a Ravenclaw in her year at Hogwarts; they chatted over her desk on occasion, and on one of those late nights, Thomas had laughed, shaking his head behind Milady and Athos as the couple left the office, hands on each others’ backs.

“God,” Thomas said nastily, “they are _so_ in love with themselves.”

Constance had frowned, and turned away to seal a letter with wax that was destined for the War Rooms. “Don’t say that. I think they deserve all the praise they get.”

Thomas laughed again, and reached out to swipe a cheeky finger across her chin. “That’s because you’re a good girl, Connie. _She_ isn’t.”

At the end of the day on the fourteenth of April, 1940, as several Aurors from the office were out protecting the British fleet approaching Nazi-occupied Norway, a commotion echoed so loudly through the main floor of the Ministry that Treville came barreling out of his office, motioning to Constance to stay, and rushed out to see what was the matter, wand at the ready. She sat still but jumpy, drumming her nails on the edge of her desk, and only rose to her feet, mouth dropping open, when a whole group of people burst back into the office, Treville at their head, and in the middle of them, covered from head to toe with blood – none of which, they discovered later, was his own – Athos. She watched them all pass her, watched Treville ensconce himself in silence with his best soldier in his office for the better part of two days – in which time they brought back Thomas’s body, barely recognizable even beyond the fact that it had no head – and waited, trying to busy herself with work and manifestly failing.

On the third day, the seventeenth, there was a memorial service for Thomas, and for the missing, presumed-dead Anne, in the Ministry lobby. Benches had been magicked out of the air so that to Constance, the domed space felt like nothing less than a church. Treville helped Athos, whose unshaven beard and wild hair made him almost unrecognizable, to remain upright in his seat while the Ministry choir sang a madrigal – something about a summer wedding, and a winter funeral – and Constance, sitting in the back of the crowd, found herself crying for all of them, for the death of the idea that they would all come through this alright; that they were wizards, they had all the power of the magical world at their fingertips, and they would be safe. The next morning, she pinned up photos of Anne and Thomas behind her desk, and crossed her fingers that they would be the only ones. (In the end, of course, they weren’t.)

A week later, a concerned Treville asked Constance to check on Athos at his London home. She wasn’t sure what she should expect, and so took a moment on the doorstep of the handsome Bedford Square house to look at herself in her compact, check the makeup which she always made sure was flawless, straighten her back, and, finally, to knock. When three tries elicited no answer, she unlocked the door with magic.

The whole place stank of glasses which had once held liquor and wine, and as she stepped across the doorjamb, her shoe landed in a pile of wooden shards, the remnant of a picture frame splintered near her heel. She hurried through a hallway into the sitting room, which was pitch dark, and, putting her bag and coat down on what she thought was an armchair, opened a pair of shutters at the back of the room, letting in weak sunlight from the garden behind.

“Jesus, _stop that_.” Athos staggered up from the sofa behind her without a sound, blinking hard, his hands clutching at his head. Constance was pretty sure he hadn’t changed his clothes since the memorial, and there were empty bottles clustered around his feet. “Who’re – ” He stopped, and looked at her hard through bloodshot eyes. “Oh, it’s you. The office girl.”

“Constance,” she said firmly, not willing to show any sign that he was scaring her. “Constance Bonacieux. Treville sent me.”

“Ah, Treville,” he grunted, flopping back down onto the sofa and reaching for a half-full bottle of Scotch. “Yes. There’s an envelope – ” he waved a hand vaguely towards what she assumed was the kitchen – “in there. My resignation. Take it to him, will you?”

“Out of the question,” Constance said, folding her arms over her chest. He looked up at her sharply, and Constance noticed then that Anne’s locket, the one she never took off, was around his neck now, glinting in the light Constance had let into the room. “Treville wants you back as soon as possible, and he sent me to make sure you were alright.”

“Alright.” Athos said flatly. “Do I look alright, to you?”

“Far from it,” Constance said, tilting her head. “So my first suggestion is a bath. Go on. I’ll get these cleaned up for you.”

He was still for a long moment, during which Constance’s fingers turned white where she was gripping her own arms, and then, finally, just as silently, he stood up, leaving the bottle behind him. “Be careful, Constance,” he said, oh-so quietly. “I’m liable to be horrid to you.”

“You already have been,” she said, suppressing a smile. _Office girl._ “If that’s the worse you’ve got, we’ll be fine.”

The next four weeks were incredibly long, and made more difficult by the fact that Bonacieux was back doing business in London for a time, which made getting to Athos’s house in the evening for the daily routine she had put in place – making sure he was never alone at any waking moment, in short – very difficult. After the first week, she secretly signed out a Time Turner from the office, which allowed her to take Athos home from the office at six, make sure he was drunk and asleep by midnight, and still come home to meet Bonacieux back at her second six with dinner on the table. It was exhausting, but, she thought more and more as time went on, worth it.

Athos was no easy charge, but she could also tell that he was holding back on his rage, on his grief, for her sake, and that made her believe that he would be able to live again. He was at the office every morning by nine, now, and competently dressed – he managed to make even the scruffiest of his clothes look elegant, a skill she was constantly jealous of – he was speaking to Treville in more than just hand signals, and, in the evenings, when she poured him his first glass of wine from his voluminous collection of vintages, he watched her carefully, answered her questions about the house, about him, about his family, politely and without fail. It was only around ten each night, when the cumulative effect of two or three bottles hit home, that he returned to the state he had seemed desperate to remain in ever since Norway – silent, heavy-lidded, unable to speak more than a few words.

Constance was content to allow this, for a while at least. She saw the potential of his rebirth, and, selfishly, when she was slipping into bed next to Bonacieux at the end of her twice-long days, she could fall asleep to the knowledge that she was _helping_ , that she had someone to talk to who listened. And Athos did listen, stretched out on the sofa while she banged around the kitchen or when they were tipsy and sitting side-by-side; he listened to her about Oxford, about Bonacieux, about how she loved her work and wished it was all she had. Sometimes, when she was drunk and babbling, he would reach out with one finger, touch it to her lips to silence her, and then, as she sat quiet and sad, he would bring her a cup of tea, fold her hands around the hot mug, tilt her head down into the steam until she was sleepy and content.

She knew, however – she _felt_ – that there was only so much she was capable of doing, only so far she could go in attempting to fill the hole Anne had left behind, and she worried, as Athos began to go on missions again, that something would happen – and then, it did. She listened to the wireless for days on end when Dunkirk was attacked; listened, with her heart in her mouth, to the tales of men preferring to drown rather than be shot down, of the fishing boats leaving England and churning across the Channel to save those the Navy could not; she felt sick, at the Ministry, on the day when Treville finally gave in to the inevitable and ordered her to send out the two new boys, Porthos and Aramis, to find Athos in the melee and bring him home.

When the three of them returned to the office nearly a week later, she sensed something different in him. He had hugged her, kissed her cheek, but there was something of flint in his expression, an edge to his rare laughs, which, she was nonetheless glad to see, Porthos and Aramis seemed to be able to wring from him far more often than she ever had. She liked them, those two boys, loved their easy humor and physical affection for each other; loved the way the three of them colonized the little office with their banter and drink and fierce protectiveness for each other, loved how they let her join them at the pub, at Athos’s home, where the nights of drunkenness became nights of friendship, ones where Porthos and Aramis slouched home together by midnight, leaving Athos and Constance, who didn’t need to go home as often as she had done because Bonacieux was back in Liverpool yet again, to talk and share strong wines at night and bitter coffee in the mornings.

In the six months since Dunkirk, they woke up in the same bed exactly once. It had taken Constance a moment, in that space between sleep and wakefulness, to realize that it wasn't her husband's fingers that were intertwined with her own, and when she'd opened her eyes it was to the sight of Athos lying facing her across his rumpled bed. She had still been wearing her shirt and trousers, both firmly buttoned, but her brassiere was gone and remained unfound; his shirt had been open, and his feet were bare. The look of horror on his face when she startled and woke him was something to behold, and they'd both retreated quickly, in silence. Standing in the kitchen over the slowly-boiling kettle, she'd reassured herself against her recalcitrant memory that nothing too serious had happened (this much, at least, she was sure of); and, as the water began to steam and hiss, she'd taken a deep breath and told herself that there was no way in hell she would let this ruin them.

She found him in the bath, a great hulking piece of iron with clawed feet, in whose water Athos sunk up to his nose as soon as she entered the room, watching her approach with a look which told her he fully expected her to hate him, and even demanded it. She'd put his cup of tea - splash of milk, no sugar - down on the dressing table, lifted his dripping chin out of the water, and said "Don't you dare."

That was enough, it seemed, because when they met again at work two hours later he sent a little folded memo whizzing over to her desk which floated in front of her face just long enough for her to see the elegantly scrawled  _Thank you_  inside before it shriveled into ashes on top of her typewriter. She had smiled, swept the soot away with her wand, and promised herself she'd stop drinking  _quite_ so much.

*

In early December of 1940, time ran out on her charade. She was careless; the alarms she had set up for her house were set to ring a bell on her desk at the office, but when Bonacieux came home unexpectedly at eight o’clock one evening she was already at Bedford Square, and stayed there until midnight. When she Apparated home Bonacieux was sitting waiting for her in the kitchen.

“Where have you been?”

“Out,” she said, falling back on her excuses, her heart beating in her ears. “With friends.”

“What sort of friends?” His eyes landed on the tip of her wand, which was sticking out of her trouser pocket. “ _Magical_ friends, I see.”

She squared her shoulders, protectiveness welling up and making her fists clench. “What of it?”

He got up from his chair and stepped towards her, and Constance was genuinely frightened to see rage in his eyes, and disgust, as though at some sort of betrayal.

“You will not see them again,” he growled under his breath, and, pushing past her, he went to the bedroom and shut the door with a firm snap, leaving her quietly panicking in the dim light of the lamp on the kitchen table.

She went to work late the next morning, only after she was sure Bonacieux had left, and after she had worked out a complicated charm that would allow her to carry a small alarm clock with her that would ring at his return no matter where she was. When she finally arrived at the Ministry Treville sent her straight out again, to the monthly Muggle Training Day (his permission for her to go to these was a rare thing, but he was distracted, and she jumped at the chance). This time it was in Cumbria, on a bloody cold strip of moor beneath a mountain; Athos shot her a look which told her she looked as bad as she felt, but she ignored him and the others, and took her place at the pistol range. The gun – a Browning – felt heavy and unwieldy in her small hands, but there was something reassuring about its weight, about the impermeability of the metal.

At the end of the session she remembered the look on Bonacieux’s face, and, in a moment when she felt no one was looking, put the Browning and a cartridge of ammunition into her handbag.

Athos invited her to Bedford Square that evening, and although she felt like her skin was crawling with the anticipation that the alarm in her pocket would ring at any moment, she accepted, for the promise of a drink to settle her nerves. She filled their glasses in the kitchen, and when she came back into the living room, kicking off her shoes as she went, it was to the sight of the handbag open on the coffee table, and, in front of Athos, the gun and the Time Turner, sitting side by side.

Athos looked up at her as she stopped stock still in the doorway. “Care to explain these?” he asked gently.

Constance steeled herself, marched over to him, and banged their drinks down onto the table next to the gun. “You had no right to look through my things.”

“And yet I have,” he said, infuriatingly calm. “The Time Turner is not a surprise, I suspected you must have had something going on to keep him ignorant of where you were. But this,” he said, tapping the gun with one finger, “I did not expect. Has he threatened you?”

There was something dark and furious in his tone, suddenly, and Constance felt the situation slipping rapidly from her grasp. “He suspects I’ve been spending time with wizards,” she mumbled, horrified to feel the immanence of tears rising in her throat.

“That is no crime.”

“He resents us,” she whispered, her hands twisting within each other. “He’s the one that feels threatened. I just thought – in case – ”

“You have your wand. You have all the weaponry you need. I will not see you arrested by Muggles for using one of their weapons to defend yourself. And if he ever, I mean _ever_ threatens you again, you will come to me first, and I will deal with him.”

“What,” Constance bristled, “you think I can’t defend myself? I’m not some mewling girl that needs your protection!”

“Do not think,” Athos said, low and dangerous, “that just because I kill, that I believe killing is a man’s work. You are as perfectly capable of it as anyone else. That is not the point.”

“Then what is?”

He reached out and disentangled her hands, grasping them firmly within his. “I would not see you harmed,” he murmured, “or ever put in a position where you think you have to harm others. I would never, ever wish that on anyone, least of all you.”

She sat down beside him, utterly spent; at some point, he put her glass of wine into her hands, and at some point, she cried.

A few weeks later, she went to the Yule Ball at the Ministry alone. She had thought, for a while, about asking Bonacieux to accompany her, to show him that what she did was right and _worth_ doing, but in the end, faced with his silences and absences, her courage failed her. The boys met her immediately as she arrived in the lobby, two hours later than she’d planned due to having to finish a report upstairs; the hall was decked out with columns and floating lanterns around the dance floor and the stage, where a motley jazz band was going through a lively Benny Goodman number. Athos, Porthos and Aramis were in uniform, representing all three branches of service between them, and thoroughly dashing in the dim light of old candles and hours of cigarette smoke; and Athos, with a half-drunk pint in his hand, greeted her with a kiss on the cheek and then leaned in close to her ear.

“If you want to dance to this,” he called over the din, “I happen to know that Aramis can lindy.”

She grinned hard. “And how do you know that?”

“Some things are better kept secret,” he said wryly, as he motioned Aramis over with a wave of his hand. “This young lady would like to take you for a spin, my friend.”

“My _pleasure_ ,” Aramis whooped, and grabbed Constance’s hands, setting them whirling in the crowd, legs kicking and arms flailing. She laughed as she spun, and allowed him to throw her into the beats; he was good at this, even better than the Muggles she’d danced with at university, and she laughed even harder at the thunderstruck look on Porthos’s face over Aramis’s shoulder, and at the sight of Athos snickering into his drink. She was out of breath, soon, and when the song ended, changing into something far more languorous and saxophone-heavy, she leaned into Aramis’s shoulder, happier than she had been for a long time.

“’Scuse me,” said a squeaky voice, and she looked up to see a very tipsy Porthos tugging at Aramis’s other arm. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to take this man away and shag him into next week. Where the _hell_ did you learn to do that, you sexy bugger?”

Aramis raised his eyebrows at Constance, and made to hand her to Athos, who was standing next to Porthos with his hands in his pockets, looking indecently amused. “It’s alright, dear,” Aramis said fondly, “I bet he can pull out a half-decent foxtrot.”

“Charming,” Athos drawled, and put a hand around Constance’s waist as the two younger Aurors disappeared off the dance floor. “Don’t worry,” he said, once he had Constance’s hand in his and they had started to slowly twirl, joining the dozens of other, far more amorous couples. “I promise I won’t embarrass you.”

“You never could,” she said, grinning. “Thank you,” she said after moment, more seriously. “For being here. I know it’s not your sort of thing.”

“One must keep up appearances,” he murmured, his hand tightening slightly on her waist. “We both know that.”

“We do, don’t we,” she said, to herself. His fingers, she noticed suddenly, were very cold against hers. “Athos, just so you know, I’m not – I mean, I don’t – ”

“Good,” he said gently, cutting her off. “Because I’m afraid I would never wish the likes of me on you.”

“Well,” she said lightly, and squeezed his hand, looking up at the floating sparks of light in the lanterns above their heads. “That’s settled, then.”

*

[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1271341/chapters/2786653)  
"The Yule Ball" by [JakartaInn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JakartaInn/pseuds/JakartaInn). Click for full-size.

*

As 1941 began and the boys took up residence in Meudon, she saw them less and less. The office was too quiet without them; and though she knew they were taking care of each other (she got letters, occasionally, usually written by Aramis and just signed by Porthos and Athos, downplaying various injuries and vaguely described missions), she worried. She worried about Porthos and the tension she’d sensed growing in him as the Ministry, spooked by what it had gotten involved in, got stricter and stricter about its rules of engagement in Muggle battles; she worried for the state of Aramis’s mind when he mentioned dreams in passing; mostly, though, she worried about Athos’s drinking, wondered whether he was taking advantage of being in France to get in absinthe instead of beer, brandy instead of wine, or, indeed, all of it at once. Months, and battles, passed slowly; she went home each evening at a regular time, and hadn’t needed to use the Time Turner since the Yule Ball. She and Bonacieux, when he was home, hardly spoke.

Then, suddenly, in late June, Treville called her into her office, told her that Athos had been wounded in Berlin, and the careful optimism she had constructed came crashing down. It didn’t sound _real_ , what she was hearing, even by the standards of Dark Magic – she hadn’t even realized she had a soul, let alone that one could be split, and, with her hands cupped within Treville’s as the commander spoke to her ever so softly in his French-accented English, she struggled to hold back tears at the idea that Anne was alive, that Anne had _done this_ to all of them.

“I know you’re friends,” Treville finished eventually, squeezing her fingers. “It’s a horrible thing that he’s gotten himself into, but he will be alright. They’re coming back to London, and we’ll sort it out. Alright, mon p’tit chou?”

She nodded, silent, and went back to her desk. They walked back in an hour later, and she _launched_ herself at them, angrier than she’d ever been in her life. Athos was pale and thin, and took her fury quietly, murmuring “I know” and “I’m sorry” into her ears as she shook him through her tears. Aramis and Porthos took everyone to the pub in the evening, and Constance drank harder than she had for months, somehow convinced that it would make it all not real, or at least, somewhat more bearable.

“What,” Constance whispered at some point later in the evening, when they were back at Athos’s house and she was tucked into a corner of his sofa with his head somewhere vaguely near her knee, “does it feel like?”

He was still drinking, and took a moment to finish his double-Scotch, and take a long pull on his fifteenth cigarette of the evening, before he answered. “Most days, I don’t even notice,” he finally mumbled, seeping smoke. “And then when I do, it’s – cold. Freezing. Like something has been amputated, badly.” He coughed, and reached out to stub out the cigarette in the very full ashtray on the coffee table, his other hand on his chest where Anne’s locket had until so recently been. “Dumbledore says the only remedy is remorse, and by God have I got that. But until I figure out what to do about Anne, I don’t trust myself to make the attempt. Apparently it’s – ” here he paused again, and closed his eyes, and, to Constance’s worry, smiled – “dangerous.”

The next month passed in relative serenity – notwithstanding d’Artagnan’s arrival and the mass confusion caused by his mistaking Athos for his father’s killer, which made Treville realize that someone (and they all knew who, but never talked about it) on the other side was making a very careful use of Polyjuice Potion, and made Constance realize, after a week in the boy’s company, that she was laughing more often than she had in years – but the discovery of Athos’s deception seemed to precipitate exactly the crisis he feared, because she learned what he meant by it in mid-August when Aramis came out to her in the office and asked under his breath for her help. Entering their shared cupboard of a space, she found Athos shaking and sweating in the wrap of Porthos’s strong arms, a hand clamped firmly over his mouth to keep down what was probably screaming.

“Come on, now, darling,” Aramis said, light and easy, as he ushered Constance in and closed the door firmly behind her – Constance sent up thanks to whoever might be listening that d’Artagnan was in one of his re-training courses that morning and therefore not here to witness this. “Not now. You’re not ready yet.”

“Fuck,” Athos whispered, twisting out far enough from Porthos’s hands so he could speak, panting through what was clearly a very physical pain, his hands clutched over his chest. ” _Fuck_ , it hurts, what have I done – ”

Constance took both of his shaking hands within hers, ignored Porthos’s worried look of warning, and started to talk to him, about warm summer days and Quidditch matches at Hogwarts, about the bloody awful Nazis and how good it was when he was awake and powerful and angry and out there killing them, about d’Artagnan and how much he looked up to him already, how hard he was working on his non-verbal magic just so he could eventually beat Athos in a duel, about how someday she would leave Bonacieux and it would be thanks to him.

She didn’t know how much time passed, but eventually his eyes opened and they weren’t dazed with pain. Aramis and Porthos had retreated discreetly across the room into a corner and were pouring drinks for all of them, and she reached forward to wipe sweaty hair out of his eyes.

He took a deep, shuddering breath. “Stay angry, you said?”

“Absolutely,” she said, smiling. “Don’t you dare stop.”

She took him home that evening, after Aramis and Porthos had both hugged her fiercely, and she drew strength from the towering solidity of both of them with their arms around her. Athos collapsed onto the disheveled sofa as soon as they arrived and was instantly asleep; she took off her shoes, made herself a cup of tea, and found herself staring at the clock in the kitchen until it struck midnight. It was then that she heard footsteps – how long had they been there? – and from the noise the heels were making on the wooden floors, they were the steps of a woman.

The wireless was on in the sitting room, playing something classical, a solo voice singing in what was, to her ear, suspiciously like German. And standing over Athos, in a cream blouse and pleated trousers, her dark hair piled in soft waves on top of her head, was Anne.

Constance had her wand outstretched in her hand before she could think. “What,” she hissed, “are you doing here?”

Anne turned to her casually, lifting her hand from Athos’s slumbering forehead. “I wanted to get some of my things,” she said, with a sweet, gap-toothed smile. “Even traitors can get sentimental.”

“Get out.” Constance felt her hand shaking, and hoped it was out of rage, not fear. “You’ve no right to come back.”

Anne tilted her head, and frowned. It was almost comical, the blatant performance on her face. “So, what,” she said silkily, “you’re his protector now?”

She laughed, and turned away from Constance; she picked up a framed photograph on the sideboard, one of the few that had survived Athos’s rampage from eighteen months before (she and Oliver stood on the deck of a ship), and put it into her handbag before speaking again. “You needn’t worry, dear. I have no designs upon him – not at the moment, at any rate. I’m not here to finish the job.”

“Then leave. I’m well within my rights to kill you.”

“Oh, please,” Anne sighed, as she stepped over to the wireless and turned up the volume a notch, humming deep in her throat along to the music. “You’ve never killed anyone in your life.”

“First time for everything.”

Anne stood up straight, and turned to Constance with another smile. “Do you know this piece? It’s the St. Matthew Passion. I’m impressed that the BBC is still playing German music – though I suppose the public wouldn’t begrudge them a bit of Bach.”

She swept by Constance on her way to the door, only inches away, and was singing under her breath, warm and beguiling. “ _Ich will hier bei dir stehen, Verachte mich doch nicht! Von dir will ich nicht gehen, Wenn dir dein Herze bricht…_ ”

In the morning, Constance told Athos what had happened, and what little color there usually was in his face rapidly drained away; but for a long time, he said nothing. It was only when Constance was about to Apparate home so she could change before work that he stopped her with a hand on her elbow, and his mouth worked for a moment before he brought himself to speak.

“Did she say anything about – ” He paused, and Constance couldn’t help putting a hand over her mouth as tears pricked the corners of her eyes, knowing what was coming. “About why?”

Why Thomas, he was asking, why Germany, why not _him_. Constance shook her head, and swallowed back her sorrow. “No. I’m so sorry.”

*

[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1271341/chapters/2786656)  
"Past Lives" by [JakartaInn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JakartaInn/pseuds/JakartaInn). Click for full-size.

*

In November of 1941, all four of the boys were given a month’s leave, no ifs, ands, or buts. Treville was insistent on the matter, and equally insistent that despite their varying levels of stupidity, they should spend their time _actually_ relaxing instead of going off somewhere to indulge their senses of self-righteousness and getting themselves killed. They took it with the expected bad grace, and ended up spending most of their time practicing their dueling skills in the lobby of the Ministry, adding yet another headache – and the extra chore of replacing everything they broke – to Constance’s days. After a week, however, they started to take the hint, and disappeared to try and do something that wasn’t work. Families were visited, and photographs of happy cousins and parents and weddings appeared in Constance’s mail in a desperate attempt to deny the war and insist that they were having a good time.

Athos went to Paris. As one did, of course, in wartime. And in the second week of the month, Constance met Porthos, Aramis, and d’Artagnan at a local pub for a drink and was greeted by the sight of them all grinning like Cheshire cats.

“All right,” Constance said, once she’d worked her way through most of a pint. “What are you all so pleased about?”

“Athos,” Porthos said, with barely-contained glee, “is _stepping out_ with someone.”

“Someone _French,_ ” d’Artagnan cackled.

“A _French_ woman,” Aramis continued, his eyebrows waggling obscenely. “I mean, you should _see_ him, it is _so funny_ – ”

“What is?” said the man himself, and Constance turned to see Athos with another round of drinks in his hands for all of them, and her jaw dropped, because underneath the normal cloud of moodiness there was something of a _happiness_ in him, and he was wearing a ridiculous-looking tweed scarf that she was fairly sure was only there to cover up lovebites, and, in general, if he wasn’t the walking personification of the health benefits of a good shag she didn’t know who was.

Aramis kept on crowing – because apparently he and Porthos had gone to Paris themselves to see for themselves that this woman existed – and, with Athos blushing and furious at her side, Constance heard all about Ninon, who wore trenchcoats and carried a pearl-handled pistol, and whom at first Athos had believed (along with most everyone else) was a collaborator who seduced high-ranking Nazi officials for her own pleasure, and of his subsequent discovery of there being a cache of weapons in her pantry and an illegal printing press run by a girl called Fleur in her wine cellar in her house in the 6th arrondisement, and Resistance men and women slipping in and out of her back door at all hours of the day and night.

She sounded like extremely bad news, in truth, and Constance couldn’t help but be frightened for the both of them, and her days over the next week involved a lot of watching clocks and tearing up half-finished letters to him, wanting time to go faster so he would come home.

On November 25th, Athos stormed into the office at eight in the morning with his clothes disheveled and thunder on his face, and her heart sank.

“I need to see Richelieu,” he said lowly, and reached over the desk to grab her wrist. “Now.”

“ _This is insane, it would be a simple operation – ”_

“ _I patently refuse to allow you to meddle in this.”_

_“What, so you can claim another martyr for your fucking General to rally the troops with?”_

_“Quite so. If you interfere I will have no hesitation – in fact, it would be a true pleasure – in re-opening Azkaban **just** for you – ”_

Constance lowered her head and pretended she hadn’t heard every word as Athos re-emerged into the main office. He was at her side, suddenly, and pulled her to her feet, rushing both of them towards the door. “What!”

“I need your help,” he said quickly as he tugged her along the corridors. “We’re going to Paris.”

“Like hell!” she yelped, pulling herself free from his bruising grip. “What’s happened?”

“Ninon’s house is going to be raided, today,” he growled, through gritted teeth. She had never seen him quite like this, never thought he could be this determined on anyone’s behalf. “She’s refusing to leave. We have to get her out.”

“Richelieu doesn’t want you to interfere,” she said, as realization dawned.

“No. He’d rather let her die so he can have another sob story for his fucking Free French radio broadcasts.”

“And where do I come in?” Constance protested as they kept walking – his hand was on her back, now, and still just as insistent. “Get one of the boys to go with you, I can’t do this!”

“d’Artagnan is with his family, and Porthos and Aramis are in Spain,” Athos said, shaking his head. He laughed, then, bitterly, and bared his teeth through his grin as they emerged onto the street outside the Ministry. “Besides, woman’s touch and all, maybe I should just get you to talk some _fucking_ sense into her – ”

She spun him around and slapped him, hard enough that it sent pain shocking up through her forearm. He stopped dead, staring at her, and then, finally, as her heart beat wildly in her chest, lifted a hand to rub at his jaw.

“I’m sorry,” he sighed. “I just – ”

“I know,” she said shakily. “But you can’t – ”

“Yes,” he said, nodding, and she thanked their lucky stars that they’d perfected this, this method of conversing without words. “I have to do this. She’ll never forgive me, but I swear I’m doing it for _her_ sake – ”

Constance took a deep breath. “What do you want me to do?”

“There’s a safe place where you can wait, in Paris, and I’ll get her and Fleur to find you there. Meet me at mine in an hour.”

When she did, waiting in her most sensible clothes on the damp pavement outside the house in Bedford Square, he emerged clean-shaven, and his hair was cut short enough that she barely recognized him. He had two packs with him, one filled with a uniform of some description and the other full of canned food, tinned ham and coarse bread. Constance asked the question with her eyes, and he shrugged. “Shortages,” he said. “We’ll leave them at a boulangerie.”

He also had an Invisibility Cloak which Constance hoped to God had been signed out properly from the office and not simply stolen. It came in handy, at any rate, when they Apparated straight into Paris, to a cobbled sidewalk on the bank of the Seine, wet and slippery with the rain which immediately started to seep into her shoes. Athos was warm against Constance’s side as they walked, dodging other pedestrians huddled against the cold, faces pinched with hunger and exhaustion shoved down into the collars of thin coats.

Ninon’s house was in a pristine Haussmann-style building on Rue Guisarde, grey stone and shuttered windows looming down into the narrow street. Athos didn’t take them there, however, but drew Constance to a building directly opposite it, slipping a cool metal key into her hand.

“Third floor, right-hand side,” he murmured. “Wait there, and watch. I’ll send them to you when I can.” At her panicked look, he squeezed her hands, and leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek. “Thank you for coming.”

He left her there, and as she shrunk against the wet wall to disguise herself from the sudden unveiling of the cloak, she watched him stuff it into one of his packs, swing them both back over his shoulders, and walk across to Ninon’s door, raindrops splattering against his coat. The apartment at the top of the stairs, when she unlocked it, obviously belonged to someone who had fled the city (or perhaps Athos had been staying there?) – the electricity was switched off, and the furniture covered in drapes, but from the street-facing windows she had a perfect view of Ninon’s, so she conjured a little fire in her hand for warmth, and settled down to wait.

Just before three o’clock, a slight woman emerged from the house, and made her way over the street towards the building where Constance was waiting; she straightened and clutched tighter at her wand, unable to see in the gathering sundown who it was. When a sharp tap came at her door, she opened it to find a girl, younger even than Constance, with a narrow face and arms crossed nervously across her flat chest, the residue of black ink under her short fingernails.

“Fleur Bodin,” the girl said, her eyes scanning the room behind Constance. “Ninon told me to come. What’s going on?”

The splintering sound of Ninon’s door shattering told them exactly what was happening, and Fleur let out a cry of despair as she rushed to the window at Constance’s side. There were soldiers filing into the safe house, and within seconds some of them were emerging again, throwing bundles of paper into the gutter, where they quickly soaked up the rain. They had found the weapons, too, and brought them out to fall in piles on the cobblestones.

Nothing could have prepared Constance for the sight, then, of a slim figure being pulled out of the house by her hair, blond curls wrapped around the black glove of an SS officer. He threw Ninon down onto the street, pulled out his sidearm, and, without a moment’s hesitation, shot her in the back of the head.

Fleur screamed, her hands white-knuckled on the windowsill. She wasn’t the only one; passersby, who had stopped in their curiosity over the raid, suddenly scattered, pale husbands ushering away their weeping wives and shrieking children, as blood began to spread over the pavement. Constance grabbed Fleur, pressed the girl’s head into her shoulder in a frantic attempt to keep her quiet, and, feeling herself shaking all over, prayed.

The wait was excruciating. After she was sure Fleur wouldn’t cry hard enough to alert any neighbors, Constance peered down for long enough to watch the soldiers throw Ninon’s body into the back of a truck, load the weapons into another, and drive off. The rain trailed off. She paced, rubbing her hands together against the cold; she tried to stop herself from trembling, and failed miserably. Finally, at nine o’clock, with Fleur having grieved herself into a restless sleep, there was a soft pop outside the door, and Athos staggered his way into the apartment. He was wearing the SS uniform, and Ninon was unconscious in his arms but breathing, her beautiful head on her shoulder.

“You _utter bastard,_ ” Constance wept as she threw herself towards them.

They put her on the bed to rest, and Constance helped him wipe away the fake blood from her temples and neck. His hands were shaking just as badly as hers, and he kept running his hands through his cropped hair, blinking hard, his breath harsh between his teeth.

“Still have a few tracks to cover,” he said eventually, shrugging the forbidding uniform back over his arms. He had stubble on his cheeks, which reminded Constance better of what he should look like, but still, he frightened her. “I’ll be back by morning.”

With him gone again Constance allowed herself to sleep for a few hours, and woke around four to the sight of Ninon standing at the window, staring into the blackout. She was smoking, and when she turned to Constance and spoke, in English, it was with a voice made husky and low by the habit.

“Where will he take me?”

Constance shook her head to clear it, and to answer. “He hasn’t told me. London, perhaps – or America.”

Ninon looked at her carefully as Constance approached. She was so striking, even in the dark – _too_ beautiful, Constance thought suddenly, too conspicuous to have continued to do the work she had done for too much longer, and she sensed that Ninon knew this to be the case, and hadn’t cared. “You are a witch, as well?” Ninon asked.

“Yes,” Constance nodded. She took out her wand and allowed Ninon to examine it in her white, long-fingered hands.

“What a world it is we live in,” Ninon said dryly as she handed it back. She stubbed out her cigarette under her heel, and turned away.

A man came to the door at five, a man Ninon knew, and took a weeping Fleur away, to some place safe. And then, at six, Athos returned, and stood carefully in the doorway, finally back in his civilian clothes, staring at the back of Ninon’s proud neck where she sat at the table. “We should go,” he said gently.

He clasped Constance’s hands between his, and then, having drawn Ninon close to him – she closed her eyes, and wound her arms around his waist – they Apparated. Constance closed up the apartment and then did the same, landing in front of the entrance to the Ministry, her head swimming and her throat parched. It was starting to get light in London, and as she sat numbly at her desk and the Aurors on duty began to switch over from the night to the day shift, she felt herself falling asleep.

A hand gently shook her awake some time later, and she opened her groggy eyes to see that it was Athos, pale and looking just as tired as she felt. It was nearly noon, and someone – Treville, she suspected, and by God was she grateful to him for it – had moved her into the break room and laid her down upon the settee, put a blanket over her legs.

“It’s done,” Athos murmured. “She’s in New York. The French embassy was very happy to see her.”

He waited a moment, and then, squeezing her shoulder, started to stand. Constance moved, then, grabbed his wrist, kept him crouched beside her. “Don’t give her up,” she whispered. “It would be such a shame if – I mean, you – ”

For a moment he looked stunned, but then he smiled, and covered her restraining hand with his own. “I rather think it’s up to her,” he said softly, as Constance’s eyes fell closed again of their own accord. “But yes, I know.”

*

[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1271341/chapters/2786662)  
"Women's Work" by [JakartaInn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JakartaInn/pseuds/JakartaInn). Click for full-size.

*

As 1941 turned into 1942, Constance realized that she had started to fall in love with d’Artagnan.

When he had first arrived, she had promised him the use of the guest room at her house – only when Bonacieux wasn’t home, so when he was d’Artagnan had to sleep on a sofa at one of the other boys’ – and she had, despite herself, become used to the sound of his boots clattering on her stairs in the morning, to the little Gascon ditties he sung to himself as he shaved what little hair grew on his chin. He talked with her for hours when he wasn’t on a mission, proving himself incredibly adept at getting in her way as she tried to file paperwork, spilling ink, and being the fondest nuisance she could ever have imagined having. She loved watching Porthos swing him onto his shoulder and carrying him out of the office when he deserved it; she loved the look of determined concentration on his face when Aramis guided his hands to correct his aim with a pistol.

She loved watching him and Athos duel, sending sparks of fiery colors towards each other with their wands and hands, loved the competition that bred such respect between them. She enjoyed watching them in general, the two of them – the one who had kept her alive, and the other whom, it seemed, was starting to remind her how to live. d’Artagnan reminded her, in point of fact, of herself – before the Ministry, before Oxford – and that scared her.

“It’s good to see,” Athos murmured one morning, as he handed her a stack of reports with his spiky, scrawled handwriting all over them. “How much he loves you, I mean.”

“Stop it,” she said, smacking his hand. “You mustn’t talk like that. I’m a married woman.”

“Indeed,” he replied, with a smile. “A married woman who, as everyone knows – including him, most importantly – is one of the kindest and best in the world.”

She felt a blush rise into her cheeks, but looked back at him firmly, tilting her head in exasperation. “And what would I do with the love of a twenty-year-old puppy like him?”

One of Athos’s eyebrows rose. “You don’t seriously think you need approval to return his feelings from any of us, do you? From me?”

“Of course not,” she scoffed, her blush spreading down the back of her neck as she turned away and busied herself with making sure her enchanted typewriter wasn’t putting words across the edge of the page it was working on. “Though I suppose it would be nice – ”

“You have it,” he said instantly behind her, low and warm. “Unreservedly.”

And there and then, Constance felt freed.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The German that Anne sings is from [a short chorale in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP4qMGYOgVw), and can be translated as: “I will stay here with you, do not scorn me! I will not leave you, even as your heart breaks.” (Translation by Pamela Dellal for the Julliard 415 Early Music Ensemble.) And the madrigal from the memorial service that I was thinking of is “[Who will win my lady fair](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGOTnB0rtI0),” as arranged by Robert Pearsall; lyrics [here](http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=991). All of this music and Milady being a music lover is basically a massive act of self-insertion, sorry about that *G* And if anyone’s curious about the lindy hop, [this is magnificent stuff](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9xxeWRxSbA)! Also: I’m aware that my timing of having Treville in England in 1939, before France was invaded/de Gaulle fled to England, is out of key with my initial setup in Ch. 1. Maybe Treville was an advance party? Anyway, hope it doesn’t bother anyone too much!


	5. V: Fanmixes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Character, Thematic, Period, and Classical fanmixes for _Then Is My Soul..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for this not being a real chapter - life is very busy at the moment and I won't be able to write again for at least another week, so I thought I'd throw something together to bridge the gap. And JakartaInn has some truly lovely stuff for you all. I hope you enjoy this - and I'm happy to chat about any music choices!

*

**Then Is My Soul with Life and Love Inspired**  
[Lucky](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7GvY6O9J4w) | Bif Naked  
What could I say to you except I love you, and I’d give my life for yours? We are the lucky ones.

*

**Characters**

**Athos** | [Body](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o0WYiK52Dg) | Mother Mother  
Take my hands, they’ll understand / Take my heart, pull it apart / Take my brain, or what remains

**Porthos** | [Tightrope](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwnefUaKCbc&feature=kp) | Janelle Monae  
When you get elevated / They love it or they hate it / You dance up on them haters / Keeping it funky on the scene

**Aramis** | [Heartbeats](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcv3v6XfEvM) | The Knife  
Both under influence / We had a divine sense / To know what to say / Mind is a razorblade

**Constance** | [Her Morning Elegance](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_HXUhShhmY) | Oren Lavie  
The sound of water makes her dream / Awoken by a cloud of steam / She pours a daydream in a cup

**d’Artagnan** | [Je fais de toi mon essentiel](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKSD-7bWVDE) | Emmanuel Moire  
Tu sais mon amour / Tu sais les mots sous mes silences / Ceux qu’ils avouent, couvrent et découvrent

**Treville** | [Honest Man](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf0FkXpcCMs) | My Morning Jacket  
Try to walk this earth an honest man / But evil waves at me its ugly hand

**Anne (Milady)** | [Begin the Beguine](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx2JNsTcFJg) | cover by Sheryl Crow  
It brings back the sound of music so tender / It brings back a night of tropical splendor

**Richelieu** | [Play with Fire](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trxpFUliKmo) | cover by Cobra Verde  
Not in Knightsbridge anymore / So don’t play with me / ‘Cause you’re playing with fire

**Ninon** | [Delicate](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnL3NfhOsBM) | Damien Rice  
We might make out when nobody’s there / It’s not that we’re scared / It’s just that it’s delicate

*

[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1271341/chapters/2852449)  
"Mail Call" by [JakartaInn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JakartaInn/pseuds/JakartaInn). Click for full-size.

*

**General**

**Chez Bonacieux** | [Ironic (MTV Unplugged)](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcePq5FoE1E) | Alanis Morissette  
It’s like rain on your wedding day / It’s a free ride when you’ve already paid

**Bedford Square** | [Hide and Seek](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McDgDlnDX0Y) | Imogen Heap  
Oily marks appear on walls / Where pleasure moments hung before / The takeover, the sweeping insensitivity of this still life

**Hogwarts** | [Everything I Own](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q1kB0R4Ijs) | Bread  
Is there someone you know / you’re loving them so / but taking them all for granted?

**Drunk** | [The Parting Glass](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzgGat75f5I) | Ed Sheeran  
Of all the money I e’er had / I spent it in good company / And all the harm I’ve e’er done / Alas it was to none but me

**Soldiers** | [Descendants of King Canute](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P-eOm3zXAs) | Nephew  
Oh no, please tell the code / We like what we know / But we don’t know what we like here / Please salute

**Brotherhood** | [A Sadness Runs Through Him](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hewEMQUIuU) | The Hoosiers  
Time and again boys are raised to be men / Impatient they start, fearful they end

**Love in Wartime, I** | [Gunfight](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNjLlhns9qY) | Laurence Fox  
Don’t fall in love if you don’t want a gunfight / If you’re not afraid to fall

**Dying** | [Hear You Me](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pQo9OQlIB8) | Jimmy Eat World  
What would you think of me now / So lucky, so strong, so proud? / I never said ‘thank you’ for that

**Living** | [Run Boy Run](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmc21V-zBq0&feature=kp) | Woodkid  
Tomorrow is another day / And you won’t have to hide away / You’ll be a man, boy / But for now it’s time to run, it’s time to run

*

[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1271341/chapters/2852455)  
"Summer Break" by [JakartaInn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JakartaInn/pseuds/JakartaInn). Click for full-size.

*

**World War II**   
_The songs without bespoke links can be found[here](http://www.6thcorpsmusic.us/)_

**Missing You** | I’ll Never Mention Your Name | Gladys Tell  
I’ll never mention your name / Except for every minute / Of every hour / Of every night and day

**Foxhole Humor** | [When I’m Cleaning Windows](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfmAeijj5cM) | George Formby  
The blushing bride, she looks divine / The bridegroom, he is doing fine / I’d rather have his job than mine / When I’m cleaning windows

**Shell Shock** | [Le déserteur](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjndTXyk3mw) | Boris Vian  
Monsieur le Président / Je ne veux pas le faire / Je ne suis pas sur terre / Pour tuer des pauvres gens

**Pub Crawls** | [Rum and Coca Cola](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGxL2uNr7bk) | The Andrews Sisters  
Out on Manzanella Beach / G.I. romance with native peach / Rum and Coca Cola / Workin’ for the Yankee dollar

**Resistance** | La Chant Des Partisans (Germaine Sablon)  
Sortez de la paille / Les fusils, la mitraille / Les grenades / Ohé! les tueurs / A la balle et au couteau / Tuez vite!

**Battle of Britain** | Captains of the Clouds | Dick Powell  
You’re off for the big show tonight / So fly ‘em wing to wing / You’re angels of hell and you fight / For country and your king

**Patriotism** | There’ll Always Be An England | Ross Parker (Vera Lynn)  
There’ll always be an England / While there’s a country lane / Wherever there’s a cottage small beside a field of grain

**Letters** | Dear Mom | Sammy Kaye  
The weather today was cloudy and damp / Your package arrived but was missing a stamp

**Love in Wartime, II** | It Had To Be You | Vera Lynn  
I wandered around and finally found the somebody who / Could make me be true, could make me feel blue / And even be glad just to be sad, thinking of you

*

[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1271341/chapters/2852464)  
"See Europe By Car" by [JakartaInn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JakartaInn/pseuds/JakartaInn). Click for full-size.

*

**Classics**

**Aftermaths** | [Lacrimosa](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xacflWZig8c) | Zbigniew Preisner  
Full of tears shall be that day / On which ashes shall arise / The guilty man to be judged

**Mercy** | [Erbarme dich, mein Gott](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZb7FcP84CM) | J. S. Bach (Damien Guillon)  
Have mercy, my God, for the sake of my tears / Look hither / Mine eyes and heart weep bitterly before you

**The Fairbankses** | [Who shall win my Lady fair](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGOTnB0rtI0) | arr. Robert Pearsall  
Who shall bury my lady fair, when the trees are green? / No, not I / I’d rather marry my lady fair, e’en though the trees were bare

**Winter at the Front** | [The Shepherd’s Carol](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8N2YTikOsc) | Bob Chilcott (King’s College Cambridge Choir)  
We stood on the hills, lady / Our day’s work done / Watching the frosted meadows / That winter had won

**Cathedrals in Spain** | [O Euchari](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMBrSf3dl9A) | (Emily van Evera)  
Pray for this company now / pray with resounding voice / that we forsake not Christ / in his sacred rites / but come before his altar / a living sacrifice

**Repression** | Selection from _Ainadamar_ ([5:05-9:45](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA-UtAwk_nA#t=05m05s)) | Osvaldo Golijov  
 _The Falange demand the capture and execution of Federico García Lorca_

**Four Variations on a Theme (Brothers)** | [Passacaglia](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCSEEvEm3uc) | Heinrich Ignaz Biber (Andrew Manze)  
 _Passacaglia for unaccompanied violin on a descending four-note scale_

**Summer in France** | [Margot labourez les vignes](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i9D6pisPD4) | Jacques Arcadelt (The King’s Singers)  
Margot works in the vineyards very early / Returning from Lorraine, I met three captains

**Remembrance Days** | [I Vow To Thee My Country](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvouc8Qs_MI) | Gustav Holst & Cecil Spring Rice  
We may not count her armies / We may not see her king / Her fortress is a faithful heart / Her pride is suffering

*


	6. VI: Liaisons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liaisons: or, in which there are Historicized Naughty Bits. **Includes NSFW images.** Featured pairings are Aramis/Porthos; Athos/Ninon de Larroque; Constance/d'Artagnan; and OT3.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're back! Sorry for the delay, everyone - RL kicked my arse these past few weeks. Hopefully [my kink meme fills](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1370854/chapters/2866528) were of interest to some in the meantime. Both JakartaInn and I have our reservations about how this chapter turned out, but in the end we just wanted to put it up and get the fic going again, and are looking forward to doing more.
> 
> Don't forget to leave [JakartaInn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JakartaInn/pseuds/JakartaInn) comments and kudos! She's done some beautiful stuff this week. :-)

*

**Belgium, December 1944**   
_Siege of Bastogne_

Sleeping in the cold – or, rather more to the point, sleeping in _fucking snow_ – was something Aramis would never, ever get used to, and in truth he never _wanted_ to. It was an unnatural, evil thing, to expect a man to force himself to stop shivering for long enough to close his eyes; it was absurd, and downright unreasonable, to expect a man to be comfortable with the idea of falling asleep when he could simply slip away into death because of it, limbs turning to stone and blood to ice.

There had been many a time when he’d wavered and nearly given in to the impulse to light a magical fire in his hand or in their foxhole; but he’d resisted eventually, as they all had, out of either stubbornness or sympathy, to cheat his way into warmth when the Muggles around them hadn’t the option. He suspected, however, that he wasn’t the one who had it the worst, that feeling of dread at the signs of exhaustion. Athos, for example, had left him alone in their shared foxhole hours before, creeping through the snow-spotted trees in search of something to relieve his boredom and keep him awake – alcohol, probably, which he would find dispersed among the various Americans dotted in their own holes around them and would trade his right arm for. Porthos’s solution to the problem was more physical, and more trusting – he walked through the woods for hours in concentric and widening circles, checking perimeters, kneeling down to one group, then another, sharing filthy jokes and cigarettes, until his legs were literally crumbling beneath him and he could do nothing except collapse into Aramis’s side and close his eyes, waiting for morning.

It was the fourth day on which he had done this, but his mood seemed to have lightened on this particular evening as he huffed down into a crouch beside Aramis, burrowing his shoulders into the hard wall of their dirty trench. “Too quiet,” he grunted, shoving his helmet down further over his eyes and shrinking his neck and chin down into his collar. “They’re gonna bombard us soon, mark my words.”

“Oh, good,” Aramis said vaguely. A draft of cold air was seeping into his thick clothes from somewhere – he wasn’t sure where – despite his best attempts to keep his body airtight under the gloves, the scarf, the woolen hat under his helmet which had been stolen more times than he could count by the rest of the boys. In contrast to Porthos’s anticipation of excitement he felt thin, and stretched, and dangerously close to hallucinating; not with dreams brought on by the cold, necessarily, but by its effects, by the endless waiting and fatigue and fucking exhausting tremors it caused.

Porthos looked at him, eyebrows raised. “You’re cold.”

“Noooo,” Aramis sniggered, hunching down further into frozen mud. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

Porthos made a small sound of discontent such as only he could make – one that hinted at anger, and promised nothing but compassion – and grabbed Aramis’s shoulder, manhandling them both until he was pressed up against the side of the foxhole and wrapped fully around Aramis, arms and legs holding him fast and warm. Aramis shuddered briefly at the touch of frozen clothes against suddenly unguarded patches of skin as they shifted, but relief came quickly, as though sinking into a hot bath, as he felt Porthos’s slow, calm breath on his face. It was amazing, he often thought, and wonderful, how such menace and such care could be contained within one person.

That that person was his, and he was theirs, was even better, he thought hazily, as Porthos’s freezing hand crept into the front of his trousers and rapidly started to warm against his belly. “Insatiable bastard,” he murmured.

“Try to stop me,” Porthos whispered back, and Aramis felt his wicked grin against his cheek, the dip of dimples and slight burn of stubble.

By the count of Aramis’s watch, Athos came back to them just five minutes later. To Aramis, it felt like an hour. At any rate, when Athos did in fact come back and was standing above them with helmet straps undone and his rifle slung over his shoulder, a half-smoked cigarette in his mouth, Aramis was little more than melted rubber in Porthos’s grip, his spent cock softening in his pants, and his gloves and scarf were long gone, no longer needed.

“Evening,” Athos smirked, and Porthos laughed low against Aramis’s neck. Perhaps, Aramis mused as Athos jumped down to join them, bringing snowflakes and twigs and mud with him, he would survive this after all.

Perhaps they all would.

*

**Paris, November 1941**   
_Companion of the Liberation_

Time off was bad enough; enforced time off was, Athos had thought to himself as he sat on his windowsill on the Rue Guisarde, Treville’s very clever idea of torture. _Had_ thought was the operative phrase, however, because as he stared down at the house across the way, and tapped an absent drum of fingers on the invitation in his hand, he wasn’t so sure anymore.

On the one hand, he could stay put, and spend his leave wallowing in drink and cabin fever; on the other, he could try to infiltrate the home of a known collaborator, and have his head handed to him on a plate by his commanding officer. In the end, the choice was simple, of course. His German had always been good, and with the help of a translation charm it was even better as he mingled with the Nazi officers laughing in their clouds of cigar smoke, repressing the urge to slide a knife into a back, to slip poison into a glass of confiscated brandy.

Two hours into the evening, he made eye contact with his host, and, over the next hour, watched her glide through the room, listened to her too-French, too-melodious German, stared at the stray curl at the nape of her neck.

Ninon – for that was her name, and he wished he didn’t know it because it would just make hating her that much harder – took his arm around ten o’clock, walked with him around the room, chatting in French about something to do with rations and how nice it was to have the patronage of her German friends to make up the shortfall of food and drink, and then, as they reached the door, she pulled them both aside into a corridor, where it was dark and the chill of a winter evening pressed in through the walls.

“Your German is very good,” she whispered, leaning in close to his ear, in English, and he stiffened. She smelled of cedar, and the heaviness of red Bordeaux. “Just the hint of an accent, however.”

“ _Je ne vous comprends pas_ ,” he murmured, trying to cover his tracks. She laughed under her breath, and leaned closer.

“When you return to London, give my regards to the General. Tell him I am safe, and hope to see him soon.”

She kissed him, then, sweet and inquiring, and as her hand reached up to cup his cheek he surged against her, put an arm around her waist, reacted to the sudden fierce arch in her back by pushing aside the low cut of her blouse, pressing at her nipple with his thumb.

She bit at his lower lip, and then lifted her head, smiling in the dim light. “ _On peut se tutoyer_ ,” she said – it was not a question – as she took a step back, resettled her shirt over her shoulders, and turned to return to the party, leaving Athos with his head spinning its way into a horrendous headache, thinking that yes, whatever they’d just done was very informal indeed, and he wasn’t sure how on earth it had happened.

A week later, he went out with her, late at night, to deliver pamphlets that her printer, Fleur Bodin, had worked up in the basement, and as they clattered through the pitch-black streets of the 6th at four in the morning, running to escape a patrol that had spotted them, he grabbed her hand and felt her pulse racing next to his. Back at the house, he allowed himself to be swept up by the sensation of her arms around his shoulders as he carried her towards the bedroom, where she told him to fuck her until she could only think and speak in French.

He preferred the way it sounded in French, in fact, with her legs around his hips and his mouth on her neck. _Baise-moi. Chatte. Bite. Cul. Nique-moi. Je jouis._

He fell asleep on her shoulder, and slept deeper than he could remember doing for a long while, until he woke to an empty bed, and thought, for the first time, of how she was nothing like Anne. He forgot that, to his immense relief, as soon as Ninon came back into the room in her dressing gown, bringing the smell of strong, bitter coffee with her; and his head spun again, this time without the associated pain, when she straddled him and put a hand around the back of his neck as he propped himself up so he could kiss her small breasts.

Athos tried, over the next two weeks, not to think too hard about what he was doing, about what they were doing. It felt dangerous, whatever it was they _were_ doing. Her streak of exhibitionism, undressing him in broad daylight with her windows open to compensate for the opportunity lost in the darkness of nighttime blackouts, certainly was; his lurking in the house while she entertained her German targets, stealing embraces and brief, heavy-breathed instances of her skirt up around her waist and his trousers undone in her kitchen while men who would kill them without a second thought drank and sang in the next room, definitely was. Even the quieter times, when they were alone and the windows were closed and his head was between her legs, her hand scraping through his hair, and she greeted him with a kiss full of cigarette smoke after she came, felt dangerous, to him; to what he was afraid was happening to him.

She knew this – she was alarmingly perceptive, no doubt a required trait for a double-agent – and sang to him, sometimes, when he was awake far too late and staring at her from across the bed, not daring to touch her, in his moments of doubt and painful remembrance. _Mignon, allons voir si la rose,_ she sang, smoke wafting about her head, her eyes closed as she slowly entwined his fingers with hers. _Les plis de sa robe pourprée, Et son teint au vostre pareil._

When the house was raided, he shut his heart down for just long enough that he could force himself to pull the fake trigger, and reassure himself over and over that she was alive, and that he hadn’t killed her; and when they were standing on a freezing, windy street-corner in New York, finally, in front of 934 Fifth Avenue, where the Swiss were ostensibly doing business for the free parts of France and had promised to find her somewhere safe, Athos put his forehead against hers, and allowed himself a minute to grieve.

“ _Tu me manqueras, mon sorcier_ ,” Ninon murmured. She kissed him, and he tried not to clutch at the moment like a drowning man.

He failed.

*

[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1271341/chapters/2995003)  
"Parlez-Moi d'Amour" by [JakartaInn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JakartaInn/pseuds/JakartaInn). Click for full-size.

*

[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1271341/chapters/2995018)  
"Rue Guisarde" by [JakartaInn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JakartaInn/pseuds/JakartaInn). Click for full-size.

*

 **London, April 1942**  
 _The Baedeker Blitz_  

The first time they kissed was a teenager’s nightmare, bumping noses and missing the lips entirely. Constance dissolved into laughter born of the wine, the hilarity of the sheepish horror on d’Artagnan’s face, and her own nervousness, the fear of what she was allowing herself to do in her own living room. The room was lit by floating candles – d’Artagnan’s treat – and enclosed in blackout darkness which focused the world inwards on just them, curled up together on the settee, blushing and pressing not arms and legs, but just their feet together under a blanket.

“Well,” she giggled, turning away from him for a moment to empty her glass and regain her courage. “That was a good start.”

She’d invited him home that evening because Bonacieux was away, and she had thought he would appreciate the familiarity of the bed he had slept in so often since arriving in England instead of being dragged through a dozen pubs by the other three, on today of all days. d’Artagnan had been with them for eight months, now, and brightened her life for as long; but there was something about what he had done today which she saw had rattled him, had started to destroy his need for his new home to be left untouched and safe for him.

The Germans had bombed Norwich. Before that, it had been Bath, and before that, Exeter. The newspapers had blazoned their motivations across their headlines: the Jerries want to destroy our spirit. Some bastard in Berlin had gotten ahold of a copy of the Baedeker Guide to Great Britain, and decided it would be their blueprint for crushing the beauty out of the home counties, to take away their cathedrals, their ancient ruins, their heritage. Constance hadn’t quite believed it at first, for how ludicrous it sounded; but she bought a copy of the book from a Muggle bookshop and leafed through it at her desk in the Ministry nevertheless, her stomach sinking at the promise of death and loss in its pages, already mourning for the potential disappearance of all those historic houses, the stained glass, the priests and wardens and unsuspecting townspeople far from the busy coasts.

d’Artagnan had been angrier than any of them as he demanded responsibility for the mission to tail and monitor the planes for Dark activity, and for a while, Constance hadn’t been able to figure out why. It had only been on this evening, when he came back and threw his broom across the office under Athos’s watchful, disapproving gaze, that she realized how much he missed his home, missed Gascony, missed the solid architecture of his stone-built French churches and cobbled streets, and how angry he was that this symbolism of England was being destroyed – just as the symbols of France had been tainted by their survival, by the capitulation of Paris because the French had not wanted _their_ monuments destroyed. For England’s cathedrals to burn, while Paris’s stood in ignominy, hurt him deeply, turned the usually happy and forthright young man into a furious coil of disappointment.

So she had invited him home, determined to make him relax, and, as always happened – though almost never when they were alone, just the two of them – he recovered himself, chattered through cooking next to her in the kitchen (they had made coq au vin, or as close as they could get to it with her ration books), as he lit the candles and sent them swooping around the room, and, in the dim light, smiled wide-eyed at her as though she was his mother, his sister, and his best girl all in one.

She was the one to lean into him, and his surprise meant it ended in failure. He gaped at her for a little while as she laughed, and then his grin returned, and he snaked his arms around her waist, pressed his nose to her neck, just breathed into her pale skin.

“You sure?” he murmured, and finally, she felt the light touch of his lips. “I mean, I know we French boys are handsome, but it’s up to you.”

She thought only for the briefest of seconds of her grief for what she was losing – the certainty of her settled life, of the strangled peace which came of the idea of being stuck and stable and going nowhere. She did not think of Bonacieux, because she didn’t want to.

“Yes,” she replied, and turned to kiss him, let herself match his eagerness touch for hungry touch.

He had not been in London during the Blitz; she had survived that. He would survive this, she knew, because the war had made relativists of them all and it was nothing compared to what London had been like in those terrible days – and as they fell together onto the single bed he had borrowed from her and his hands went to work on her blouse, she couldn’t wait to survive more with him.

*

[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1271341/chapters/2995027)  
"A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" by [JakartaInn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JakartaInn/pseuds/JakartaInn). Click for full-size.

*

 **Bedford Square, December 1940**  
 _‘The Happy Time’ for German submarines in the Battle of the Atlantic_  

Guard duty, in the first year of their war together, could mean many things.

Sometimes, it was literally standing guard over warehouses and Army bases in the home counties, as their superiors assuaged their suspicions of spy activity by Muggles and wizards alike. Sometimes they escorted defectors and fleeing dissidents, smuggled them across the Channel in small boats or on their brooms; sometimes it was a watchful gaze as they shadowed planes, troops of soldiers marching down quiet country lanes. Most of it required little of them, and left no wreckage in its wake.

The one exception was at sea, where submarines lurked and the merchants whose war it wasn’t were escorted by outdated seaplanes and rustbuckets of destroyers. These assignments required their actual presence on board, their assimilation into a group of men – of soon-found friends – who were at risk of death at any moment, into tight-aired metal cabins heavy with brine and forced levity. The rate of attrition, starting in October of 1940, was atrocious, and the Germans made sure their crowing was heard across the Channel in their broadcasts, propaganda, and the mere fact of the casualty lists in the papers.

Athos had left them at the end of November in uniform, unnaturally cleanshaven and hair cut short, tucked under the cap of a naval first officer – wearing the dress coat like a second skin, gold braid at the cuffs and a shine on his shoes. He came back to them a week later in the middle of the night, announced by a the thundering crash of glass and wood breaking in the foyer of the Bedford Square house, startling Aramis and Porthos awake from where they were curled up on the settee, having taken comfort in the residual presence of him that lingered there that was so lacking in their own homes. 

Aramis stumbled upright to the sight of Athos crouched against the hallway wall, collapsed in on himself and dripping everywhere, seawater seeping into the carpet. Porthos made a sound of shocked sorrow in his throat and pushed past Aramis, put his hands firmly on Athos's shoulders to ground him. "What happened?"

Silence fell, broken only by the wheeze of Athos's breath from the back of his mouth. He pushed Porthos away, finally, with a strength Aramis hadn't thought him capable of, and stood, supporting shaky legs with both hands spread on the wall. "What," he hissed, "do you  _think_  happened?"

He staggered away from them, leaving streaks of petroleum-laden water behind him, before Aramis could answer; but he didn't need to. He could see it, visions dancing at the edge of his peripheral sight.  _Torpedo. Oil on water, in flames (water **burns** ). Some bodies plummet, some float. Sunk too quickly for lifeboats. Water too cold to breathe. No survivors._

No survivors, that is, except for Athos, who could simply Apparate away from it all to save himself, and, later, hate himself for it, as they all did.

Porthos got up and clattered around the kitchen for a bit, silently warning Aramis not to interfere with his own grief, with his own compulsive and frustrated need to be helpful, and the complicity he thought he bore. Above them there was the sound of more running water – Athos drawing himself a bath – and Aramis went upstairs to wait, got undressed and lay on the bed in the master bedroom in just his briefs, listening to the creaks and distant rumbles of the house in the windy, wet weather. The wireless, next to him on the bedside table, murmured solemnly about Convoy HX 90, attacked by ten Axis submarines with ten ships ( _ten_ ) feared lost as it sailed towards England from Halifax. The attack, said the BBC announcer, was continuing even then as the clock ticked past two in the morning and Athos emerged from the bathroom, wearing a loose pair of Army trousers and Anne’s locket on his chest, and nothing else.

Aramis reached over and turned off the radio, and then settled back to watch Athos approach in silence. He looked wrong, incredibly so, with his hair so short it stuck up in tufts as it dried and not a hint of stubble on his broad face. It made him look _young_ , Aramis realized, far too young to bear what he had seen and done, and as Athos got up onto the bed and, without meeting Aramis’s gaze, pressed his mouth to the ridge of Aramis’s hipbone and rested there, curled in on himself, Aramis reached sideways again and picked up his wand.

It was a simple thing, really, to run his hand through the bristle on Athos’s head, feel the magic flow through his fingertips and wordlessly thicken and lengthen the hair, the dark strands becoming matted and tangled as they grew, and scratchiness prickle into his skin as Athos’s beard emerged on his chin. It was but the work of a few moments to bring him back, to make him recognizable, and yet Athos stayed still, apparently determined on falling asleep there with his cheek on Aramis’s stomach, asking for and getting nothing.

Porthos came into the room quietly, leaving the door open behind him, and nodded at Aramis, something like relief flitting across his face at the sight of them. He crossed over to the bed and climbed up onto it, but then, as he reached out for Athos, Aramis shook his head quickly, tried to warn him to _not_ –

Porthos’s hand landed on Athos’s back, and the reaction was immediate; the drive of Athos’s shoulder into Porthos’s sternum hurled the larger man back onto the bed, and Athos lost no time in straddling him, forcing downwards with one forearm onto Porthos’s neck, eyes narrowed and teeth bared. Normally – or at least in those times which had approached normality since September, when this whatever-it-was between the three of them had started – Aramis would be happy to see his two lovers wrestle, but he knew this was different, knew that Athos hadn’t yet returned to them fully and that he had a few seconds at most before Porthos recovered from his shock and took exception to the idea of being held down, of being overpowered by any means.

He rolled over, got up on his knees, straddled Porthos’s bent legs and pressed himself slowly up against Athos’s back, sliding his chin into the crook of his neck, lifted him up off of Porthos and back into him, rolling forward with his hips. “Hush,” he whispered, feathering kisses and kneading his thumbs along the lines of Athos’s abdomen, taught with over-wakefulness. “You’re here, darling, not there.”

It worked, or at least started to. Athos’s grip transferred to Porthos’s wrists, then, as Porthos’s eyes bled free of their anger and Athos’s back relaxed back into Aramis, to Porthos’s face, and Aramis let him go, watched the two of them kiss fiercely, letting in an entirely new type of aggression, one which demanded pleasure and bitten lips and the mistreatment of what few items of clothing they had left. Even the lithe muscles Athos had developed over their eighteen months of fighting were no match for Porthos, of course, and it was always Porthos who would ‘win,’ as he turned Athos over and ground him down into the mattress, peppered his back with kisses as he rolled his hips down against Athos’s arse; and, finally, he who lifted Athos’s hips, pulled down the trousers and tossed them away, and, as he pressed his cock between Athos’s cheeks, reached around and enveloped the dense silver of the ever-present locket in one big hand.

“I’m gonna take this off,” Porthos whispered into Athos’s ear, as Aramis, his own cock throbbing, edged closer, again alert to danger. “Alright?”

Athos’s nod was instant, and accompanied by a groan of defeat which, Aramis knew, presaged relief. Porthos wasted no time, ruffling Athos’s hair with the heavy chain as it passed over his head, and Anne’s token fell to the wooden surface of the bedside table with a scattering thud. Athos reached out, barely holding himself up with his other elbow, and grabbed for whatever part of Aramis he could reach as Porthos pushed so slowly into him and Athos’s breath began to stutter.

Aramis knew what Athos wanted, but he wasn’t going to give it to him – not quite, because he could think of something better. He shucked off his briefs, turned Athos’s head sideways to kiss him, with far fewer teeth and more tongue than he knew Porthos had given him, and then, as Porthos, growling in the back of his throat, started to move, he turned around, wriggled underneath them both, and craned his head upwards to lick at Athos’s cock. Athos made a sound more suited to dying than loving, and twisted to wrap his trembling arms around Aramis’s hips, his head falling downwards on his neck and his mouth taking Aramis in greedily, tongue stroking in blissful time to the thrust of Porthos’s cock driving his body forward.

Aramis felt hot and enveloped with Athos’s cock in his mouth, the warmth of his head and chest pressed under them a shivering contrast to his exposed legs. Porthos was close, he could feel – he always knew when his lover was truly out of control, and these moments, when he could see Aramis writhing beneath him and he was making Athos move like this, were definitely one of those times. Athos turned suddenly frantic, nails digging into Aramis’s thighs and pushing down far enough that the head of Aramis’s cock provoked a swallowed gag; Aramis could not help but arch into him, and reach up to fold his hands around the muscles of Porthos’s arse, pulling him down further into them, and it all happened at once – Porthos holding them all still and shaking as he came into Athos, Athos desperate to thrust downwards into Aramis’s mouth through his orgasm, Aramis sucking him hard, pulling it out of him, as he himself forced Athos’s head upwards with the strength of his release.

It took them a minute to untangled themselves, make sure Athos stayed on his knees for long enough for Aramis to get out from underneath him and for Porthos to withdraw and massage him into relaxation, so they could lay him down between them and overlap him with layers of arms and legs.

At four, Aramis was woken by movement, and found it was Athos creeping away from them, gently peeling Porthos’s arms off of his chest and crawling down the bed until he could stand; he pulled the trousers back on, tugged Aramis’s undershirt over his head. He didn’t see Aramis watching him; instead, he just picked up the locket, slid it down under the shirt to lie against his skin as usual, and left them lying there: Porthos, oblivious and secure in his belief that he had fixed something – and Aramis, shifting closer to him to replace the warmth Athos had abandoned, and vowing never to disabuse him of that hope.

Someday, he thought to himself as he faded back into sleep, he would make Athos love them well enough to stay – for all their sakes. This, clearly, had not been that night; and he feared, suddenly, that such a night would never come.

For Porthos’s sake, though – and for Athos’s own – he would continue to try.

*

[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1271341/chapters/2995042)  
"Peace Dividend" by [JakartaInn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JakartaInn/pseuds/JakartaInn). Click for full-size.

*

[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1271341/chapters/2995048)  
"Arms Control" by [JakartaInn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JakartaInn/pseuds/JakartaInn). Click for full-size.

*

[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1271341/chapters/2995078)  
"Fraternization" by [JakartaInn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JakartaInn/pseuds/JakartaInn). Click for full-size.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's/Historical notes: the first section is, as some of you may have guessed, set in a future chapter-world which will be a crossover with HBO's _[Band of Brothers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wlYPlwjGOY)_. The position/location of the French embassy in New York was a little confusing to figure out - they had bought a building at 934 Fifth in the 30s which they were apparently going to use, but then, without an official government, didn't take up residence until after the war. The Swiss government seems to have taken care of the building until then. The lyrics Ninon sing are from "[Mignonne, allons voir si la rose](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wadgh0f6nSI#t=01m13s)," a famous French madrigal (I changed the gender to 'mignon' to fit Athos), and can be translated roughly as 'My darling, let us go look at the rose... the folds of its dress, and its color so like yours.' The Baedeker Blitz, as crazy as it sounds, [was real](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baedeker_Blitz); and, recently, inspired [this _Horrible Histories_ sketch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7mBIifJQf4#t=22m39s). [Convoy HX 90](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convoy_HX_90) was attacked continuously by submarines over a three-day period at the start of December 1940 as it traveled from Nova Scotia to Liverpool; 11 of its 41 ships were eventually lost. Victories like this were what convinced German naval commanders that they had hit on an effective strategy with their 'hunting packs' of subs all working in tandem to attack one target. Oh, and if Athos seems super scary in the last bit, it's because of the dating - this is set before the great Horcrux reveal, when he's still feeling all soulless and distant.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [London 1942](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1271341) by [AgarthanGuide](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgarthanGuide/pseuds/AgarthanGuide)




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